As Bobby Kotick described, a lot of the job satisfaction felt by Activision Blizzard employees comes from the mission of their company. One employee summarized that mission this to a number of dif ferent jobs at a number of dif ferent companies. Employees who help make cars, phones, software, toys, or furniture might derive satisfaction from such sentiments. So might employees who help provide services, whether groceries, dining, financial planning, hospitality, or delivery. It does seem, however, that some satisfaction dynamics might be different in a gaming company than in other kinds of companies. Put differently, some aspects of job satisfaction might depend on the industry in a way that transcends particular job characteristics. It turns out that some studies have been done on job satisfaction among gaming employees, specifically. One study, published in Information, Communication, & Society, used an interview methodology to understand the dynamics of video game developers. Said one developer, “Paid overtime is virtually unheard of . . . So why am I still here? It’s because I can’t imagine a career doing anything else. I work with smart people. We tackle interesting problems. I’m paid enough to support a family. And I could work almost anywhere in the world. Is it hard? Sure. Is there a crunch? Sometimes . . . Is it worth it? Definitely.”* Of course, that quote also points to a dark underbelly that is sometimes discussed in the context of video game developers: the long hours. Another study, published in Organization, coded the content of blogs written by spouses of game developers. One quote was directed at the CEO of one of Activision Blizzard’s major competitors: “You do realize what you are doing, right? And you do realize that they ARE people, with physical limits, emotional lives and families right? Voices and talents and senses of humor and all that? That when you keep our husbands and wives and children in the office for 90 hours a week, sending them home exhausted and numb and frustrated with their lives, it’s not just them you’re hurting, but everyone who loves them?”** Such long hours point to an interesting side effect of having a job that’s meaningful, interesting, and engrossing—you want to keep doing it. Maybe longer than you should, and maybe longer than family members want you to. 4.1 If you think about the components of value-percept theory and job characteristics theory, where does “the product” fit in? How can the high satisfaction of Activision Blizzard employees be explained by those theories? 4.2 Does it make sense to think of satisfaction as an aspect of industries, rather than jobs? Activision Blizzard employs a number of different employees in a number of different roles. Is there a reason to suspect, say, a quality assurance person at Activision Blizzard to be more satisfied than a quality assurance person in a typical manufacturing job? 4.3 What role do hours worked play in job satisfaction? Do gaming companies have an obligation to help employees manage their hours, even when they are “in the zone” in their coding or even when product launch deadlines are looming?
> In 2003 Walmart began a programme implementing RFID, which turned out to be far more challenging than expected and reveals the many issue in the retail sector. Problems began shortly after the announcement in June 2003 of the initiative to tag cases and
> Global ‘vertical’ supply strategies in the apparel industry aim to emulate retailers such as Zara, which sources everything from set manufacturing plants that are situated within the same geographic region as most of its retail outlets. Setting up a simi
> In January 2007 Marks & Spencer (M&S) launched ‘Plan A’, its five-year strategy to improve the retailer’s social and environmental impact. Plan A set out 100 commitments – goals to be achieved by 2012 – covering climate change, raw materials, waste, heal
> The Bose Corporation, a USA-based manufacturer of hi-fi equipment (as shown in Figure 8.9) developed the JIT2 concept in the early 1990s. Bose recognized that, if the traditional buyer–supplier relationships were to be made more effecti
> O2 is Telefonica’s UK commercial brand and provides the communication network and supply mobile phone devices through its network of retail stores. The supply chain team have established a high degree of collaboration with their suppliers (and internal c
> CPFR pilots have been a popular diversion in the UK grocery sector. Often, they show – as in this case – that considerable opportunities for improvement exist, but that the problems of scaling up the pilot are too grea
> Travis Perkins plc (TP) is the largest UK merchant supplier of building material to selfbuilders and the construction industry. It has doubled in size in recent years, in part through acquisitions, and now owns 25 businesses, including Wickes and Tool st
> Located on the coast of east Tianjin, Binhai New Area (BNA) is at the intersection of the Bohai Economic Belt and Jing-Jin-Ji Metropolitan Circle and Bohai Economic Sphere. This is also the starting point of the Eurasian Continental Bridge and an importa
> The National Association of Italian Footwear Manufacturers (Assocalzaturifici – http:// www.assocalzaturifici.it) explains, The success of the footwear sector in Italy is linked to an enterprising spirit and to the structure of the sect
> A major supplier of digital telecommunications systems, which we shall call ‘Cymru’, had established a successful manufacturing plant in Wales. The European region had been restructured into five customer-facing divisi
> Many basic improvements were identified when the supply chain executive team from Alfa Laval examined the alignment throughout the company, as illustrated in Figure 8.4, Four areas of alignment improvement initiatives were highlighted: interactions with
> DW Windsor is a service-led manufacturer of exterior lighting that delivers road and street lighting products and design services to clients globally from their world-class production facility. The business was established in the late 1970â€&#
> Li & Fung is a Hong Kong based company that was established in the early 1900s as a mediator between Chinese speaking sellers and English speaking buyers. A century later it is one of the world’s leading textile exporters (the large
> Consumer products giant P&G has its share of supply chain scope. In 2012 the company realised $84 billion in sales and 25 of its brands generated $1 billion or more revenue. In order to realise this revenue, the company procures inputs worth over $51 bil
> Micro Compact Car AG (MCC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler-Benz (formerly a joint venture of Daimler-Benz and Swatch), is the company behind the Smart Car. The Smart City Coupé is a two-seater car measuring 2.5 metres in length, which
> Bacalao is fish that has been salted and dried, traditionally in the open air on rocks; today it is done in a drier. It has been produced in Norway since about 1640, can be kept refrigerated for several years, and is said to improve over time. It has dev
> Almost a fifth of the UK’s wheat crop goes into poultry feed and, although feed supply chains are often short and integrated, there are opportunities to improve the performance, even in these commodity chains. This was found to be the c
> The Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD) supports the development and progress of ECR initiatives in the UK and across Europe. IGD aims to fulfil consumer wishes better, faster and at less cost with forums such as reducing wasted miles (2018). The wor
> A car assembly plant is built around a simple sequence of tasks that starts in the press shop and ends as a car rolls off the final assembly line. Figure 6.13 shows these basic tasks in summary form: Figure 6.13 Basic tasks in a car assembly plant Whils
> This case study, although simplified, has been derived from a real world industrial situation. The Cranfield Currency Company (CCC) manufactures various types of cash machines under three product families, which are each produced in three variants: . The
> Victoria SA makes ‘fantastically good cakes’ from basic ingredients such as flour, eggs and butter. Demand for Victoria sponge cakes comes from two sources. Some big retailers place their order with the firm two days i
> The vast majority of warehouses in the developed world still use the pick-by-paper approach. But any paper-based approach is slow and error prone. Furthermore, picking work is often undertaken by temporary workers who usually require cost-intensive train
> As a global business serving the world’s leading vehicle manufacturers, GKN Driveline develops, builds and supplies an extensive range of automotive driveline products and systems, for use in everything from the most sophisticated premi
> The managing director of Wiltshire Distribution Transformers (WDT) had concentrated on a new generation of simplified, modular designs that used proven US technology. He had energetically exploited the market advantages this had given. WDT now has two ma
> A problem that is all too familiar to suppliers in the automotive industry is that of schedule variability. A vehicle assembler issues delivery schedules to specify how many parts of each type are required each day for the following month. And each day a
> Electro-Coatings Ltd electroplates parts for the automotive industry, for example, the marque badges fitted to the front of prestige cars. Customers were becoming increasingly demanding, resulting in Electro-Coatings undertaking a review of its internal
> Nearly 75 per cent of footballs were produced in Pakistan, mostly in the Sialkot district, Pakistan’s ‘export capital’ close to the border with India. However, an International Labour Organisation (ILO) study in 2002 showed that more than 7,000 children
> In 2005, Cisco Systems dealt with US$500 million of returned products and parts through a cost centre whose annual operating cost was just US$8 million. All returns were treated as defective product and service returns with the rationale being that all r
> Bloomberg is an information services provider that offers real-time financial data on the companies it monitors. This enables businesses to risk monitor these companies. A new development that Bloomberg is developing (internally first) is to extend the r
> For the last several years, convenience store chains across the country have launched fresh channel initiatives, which have included adding salads, freshly made sandwiches and other fresh grab-and-go products to its offerings. Penske Logistics was asked
> Smiths Aerospace is a largely UK-based supplier to both military and civilian aircraft and engine manufacturers, and is owned by General Electric of the USA. Several years ago, Smiths launched an initiative to outsource production of parts from UK suppli
> Nike has a central customer service centre (distribution centre) located at Laakdal in Belgium. The centre is 200,000 square meters in size and serves 45,000 customers in EMEA with footwear, apparel and equipment. The centre receives products from suppli
> The subject of air miles appears regularly in media headlines today. Here are two contrasting views of what is happening. Supermarkets and food producers are taking their products on huge journeys, despite pledging to cut their carbon emissions. Home-gro
> Rio Tinto is a globally operating mining company that has created central buying centres, including one in Singapore where dedicated teams buy in the supply market against forecasted demand from businesses inside Rio Tinto. This is different from traditi
> SC Johnson, the consumer products company, has gone through a major development in its Asian procurement operations, in an effort to incorporate the region into the global governance. Whilst, in the past, Asia was a more removed decentralized outpost wit
> Once the problems of introducing ‘just-in-time’ production systems (internal logistics) had been solved at the Xerox plant making photocopiers at Venray in Holland, attention shifted towards the finished product invent
> Walmart has set three ambitious goals for sustainability: 1. To be supplied by 100 per cent renewable energy. 2. To create zero waste. 3. To sell products that sustain the environment. In moving towards these goals, several key projects have been rolled
> Akzo, the Dutch-based chemicals and coatings company, owner of ICI and many other brands, has appointed a CSR officer to drive and coordinate CSR efforts across the company. To drive ownership, consideration and focus broadly across the company and in al
> When Airbus introduced its Airbus A380 double decker super plane in January 2005 to the press and the world it was an impressive show that brought out government leaders and made headlines all over the world. A little while later, however, delays to the
> The supply chain manager of OTIF plc is considering investment into a computerized routing and scheduling system for the distribution operation. The initial capital expenditure will be £25,000 and it is anticipated to have a useful life of f
> Komplex GmbH has four production lines, each of which operates for 8,000 hours a year. Each line makes a number of products, which are based on size and colour. Therefore, many changeovers are required, each incurring set-up and maintenance costs. Tradit
> Glup SA supplies a range of household soaps to supermarkets in northern Europe. There are 12 stock-keeping units (SKUs) in the range. The logistics manager has determined that an investment of €0.5 million on improved material handling equipment would co
> Filmco makes two thin film (gauge = 12μm) products for packaging applications in the food industry. Product A is coated so that subsequently it can be printed on; product B is uncoated. There is no changeover time on the production line, be
> Bond SA is planning to manufacture a new product with an initial sales forecast of 3,600 units in the first year at a selling price of €800 each. The finance department has calculated that the variable cost for each truck will be â
> Food supply chains are driven often by retailers and this holds for this case, which features a food sold in supermarkets that can be classed as a fast-moving consumer good (FMCG). Table 3.2 illustrates the cash-to-cash cycle times for three companies in
> For more than a century, Kimberly Clark (K-C) has supplied personal care products and now can claim that nearly a quarter of the world’s population, across 175 countries, use their products.. The K-C product range spans personal care, h
> Tesco PLC is the UK’s largest food retailer, with a revenue of about £51 billion for the financial year 2016–17. Across 11 countries in Central Europe and Asia, Tesco employs about 440,000 people making it
> Consider how you would react to 360-degree feedback. If you were the one receiving the feedback, whose views would you value most: your manager’s or your peer’s? If you were asked to assess a peer, would you want your opinion to affect that peer’s raises
> For junior-level employees who are trying to impress higher-ups and secure themselves a very lucrative career in the investment banking and financial services industry, the demands and stress levels can be especially intense. The responsibility, workload
> The move toward driverless cars represents another battlefield for Lyft and Uber. For its part, Lyft has forged relationships with General Motors, MIT, and Maymo—a division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Lyft’s plan is to create a suite of hardwar
> Accenture, one of the world’s largest and most successful consulting and professional services firms, recently abandoned its long-standing practice of evaluating the job performance of employees on an annual basis by ranking them against each other based
> Clearly the end goal behind the Improving Worker Well-Being initiative is laudable. The stickier question is how to achieve that goal in 72 different factories. A natural temptation would be to focus on interventions with universal appeal and to roll out
> When AT&T purchased Time Warner and its accompanying properties, including HBO, there was no shortage of individuals who wondered how the two cultures would mix. Communications expert Gary Arlen told The New York Times, “HBO’s and AT&T’s cultures also co
> Figure 2-3 classifies production deviance and political deviance as more minor in nature than property deviance and personal aggression. When might those “minor” types of counterproductive behavior prove especially cos
> Although ex-CEO Margo Georgiadis’ restructuring ideas were lauded internally at Mattel and many believed they were starting to show results, the environment shifted quickly for the toy company when retailer Toys ‘R’ Us declared bankruptcy and financial r
> Although it didn’t start that way, few people doubt the ability of Daniel Ek (CEO of Spotify) to be able to follow through any more. One early investor said, “When I first met him, he could completely articulate how this could affect the music industry a
> One of Emma Walmsley’s biggest challenges when she stepped into the CEO role at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was to use her power and influence effectively to start to change the strategic focus of the company. Under the prior CEO, Sir Andrew Witty, GSK had tak
> The growing number and insidiousness of cyber-threats has become a huge concern for companies that are responsible for the security of private user data, account information, personal information, passwords, and so forth. The average cost of a data breac
> Teams are taken very seriously at Whole Foods. Not only are company employees referred to as “team members,” but teams are given a great deal of freedom to make important decisions. For example, teams help decide what items to order and sell, and how to
> The U.S. Marine Corps is a large organization with a highly recognizable culture that values mental and physical toughness, pride, and character. However, with emerging technologies and other geopolitical trends, the battlefield is changing in ways that
> At one point, Marriott’s personality assessment was supplied by Kronos—a human resource software company. Kronos became a larger presence in the personality assessment arena after acquiring Unicru—a firm that specialized in such tests. Kronos/Unicru has
> Slack is certainly not the only chat or messaging system in use inside organizations but it is certainly one of the biggest. Estimates now hold that over 40 percent of American workers now use a chat app of some kind at work. That number goes up to more
> In addition to trust, Salesforce has a strong commitment to its equality value. The company is one of the first to employ a chief equality officer—Tony Prophet. “I’d been 40 years in the traditional business world, where we were told that creating shareh
> Ed Bastian’s profit-sharing formula stands as one of his biggest legacies. Originally, the formula gave employees 10 percent of Delta’s first $2.5 billion in pretax profits. They would then earn 20 percent of the profits beyond that $2.5 billion. Later,
> Describe the job that you currently hold or hope to hold after graduation. Now look up that job in the O*NET database. Does the profile of the job fit your expectations? Are any task behaviors missing from O*NET’s profile?
> When you think of the U.S. Postal Service’s culture, what kinds of words come to mind? Where do these impressions come from? Do you think your impressions are accurate? What has the potential to make them inaccurate?
> How can two companies with very different cultures that operate in the same industry both be successful? Shouldn’t one company’s culture automatically be a better fit for the environment?
> Is it possible for an employee to have personal values that are inconsistent with the values of the organization? If so, how is this inconsistency likely to affect the employee’s behavior and attitudes while at work?
> If you worked in a matrix organization, what would be some of the career development challenges that you might face? Does the idea of working in a matrix structure appeal to you? Why or why not?
> Which of the organizational forms described in this chapter do you think leads to the highest levels of motivation among workers? Why?
> Which is more important for an organization: the ability to be efficient or the ability to adapt to its environment? What does this say about how an organization’s structure should be set up?
> Why do the elements of structure, such as work specialization, formalization, span of control, chain of command, and centralization, have a tendency to change together? Which of the five do you feel is the most important?
> Is it possible to be a great leader of employees in a highly mechanistic organization? What special talents or abilities might be required?
> Can you think of any potential “dark sides” to transformational leadership? What would they be?
> Consider the four dimensions of transformational leadership: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. Which of those dimensions would you respond to most favorably? Why?
> Describe your “job” as a student in terms of the job performance dimensions discussed in this chapter. What would be the benefit of approaching student performance from a behavior perspective rather than from an outcome (grades) perspective? What would t
> The time-sensitive and life cycle models of leadership both potentially suggest that leaders should use different styles and behaviors for different followers. Can you think of any negative consequences of that advice? How could those negative consequenc
> The time-sensitive model of leadership argues that leaders aren’t just concerned about the accuracy of their decisions when deciding among autocratic, consultative, facilitative, and delegative styles; they’re also concerned about the efficient use of ti
> Before reading this chapter, which statement did you feel was more accurate: “Leaders are born” or “Leaders are made”? How do you feel now, and why do you feel that way?
> What would it take to have a “politically free” environment? Is that possible?
> Who is the most influential leader you have come in contact with personally? What forms of power did they have, and which types of influence did they use to accomplish objectives?
> Which forms of power do you consider to be the strongest? Which types of power do you currently have? How could you go about obtaining higher levels of the forms that you’re lacking?
> Describe the communication process in a student team of which you’ve been a member. Were there examples of “noise” that detracted from the team members’ ability to communicate with one another? What was the primary mode of communication among members? Di
> Think about the team states described in this chapter. If you joined a new team, how long do you think it would take you to get a feel for those team states? Which states would you be able to gauge first? Which would take longer?
> Before reading this chapter, how did you define teamwork? How did this definition correspond to the definition outlined in this book?
> How would you describe your student team in terms of its diversity? In what ways would there be advantages and disadvantages to increasing its diversity? How might you be able to manage some of the disadvantages so that your team is able to capitalize on
> Think of something that you “know” to be true based on the method of experience, the method of intuition, or the method of authority. Could you test your knowledge using the method of science? How would you do it?
> Think about a highly successful team with which you are familiar. What types of task, goal, and outcome interdependence does this team have? Describe how changes in task, goal, and outcome interdependence might have a negative impact on this team.
> Think about your student teams. Which aspects of both models of team development apply the most and least to teams in this context? Do you think these teams function best in an additive, disjunctive, or conjunctive manner? What are the advantages and dis
> In which types of teams have you worked? Were these teams consistent with the taxonomy of team types discussed in this chapter, or were they a combination of types?
> Think of experiences you’ve had with people who demonstrated unusually high or low levels of emotional intelligence. Then consider how you would rate them in terms of their cognitive abilities. Do you think that emotional intelligence “bleeds over” to af
> Consider your responses to the previous questions. Are cognitive, emotional, and physical abilities different in the degree to which jobs can be redesigned to accommodate people who lack relevant abilities? What are the implications of this difference, i
> Think of a job that requires very high levels of certain cognitive abilities. Can you think of a way to redesign that job so that people who lack those abilities could still perform the job effectively? Now respond to the same question with regard to emo
> What roles do learning, education, and other experiences play in determining a person’s abilities? For which type of ability—cognitive, emotional, or physical—do these factors play the largest role?
> If you owned your own business and had a problem with employee theft, would you use an integrity test? Why or why not?
> Consider the personality dimensions included in the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory and the RIASEC model. If you had to “slot” those dimensions into the Big Five, would you be able to do so? Which dimensions don’t seem to fit?
> Research on genetic influences on personality suggests that more than half of the variation in personality is due to nurture—to life experiences. What life experiences could make someone more conscientious? More agreeable? More neurotic? More extraverted
> Create a list of the most successful companies that you can think of. What do these companies have that others don’t? Are the things that those companies possess rare and inimitable (see Figure 1-2)? What makes those things difficult to
> Assume that you applied for a job and were asked to take a personality test, like the one offered by Kronos. How would you react? Would you view the organization with which you were applying in a more or less favorable light? Why?
> Given your background, which of the decision-making biases listed in the chapter do you most struggle with? What could you do to overcome those biases to make more accurate decisions?
