Scribd
Upload
4 views

Lecture 3 - ARC-Question

Sully Truin founded the Academic Recycling Company (ARC) and initially employed an autocratic leadership style, tightly controlling contract administration through the Contracts Office. After attending a training course promoting democratic management, he attempted to empower employees to make decisions, but this led to confusion, delays, and increased stress, prompting staff to request a return to his previous style. Ultimately, Sully reverted to his old management approach, which left him overworked and hindered the company's growth potential.

Uploaded by

xirija3719
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
4 views

Lecture 3 - ARC-Question

Sully Truin founded the Academic Recycling Company (ARC) and initially employed an autocratic leadership style, tightly controlling contract administration through the Contracts Office. After attending a training course promoting democratic management, he attempted to empower employees to make decisions, but this led to confusion, delays, and increased stress, prompting staff to request a return to his previous style. Ultimately, Sully reverted to his old management approach, which left him overworked and hindered the company's growth potential.

Uploaded by

xirija3719
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

4 Ten years ago Sully Truin formed the Academic Recycling Company (ARC) to offer a specialised waste recycling

ng service
to schools and colleges. The company has been very successful and has expanded rapidly. To cope with this
expansion, Sully has implemented a tight administrative process for operating and monitoring contracts. This
administrative procedure is undertaken by the Contracts Office, who track that collections have been made by the field
recycling teams. Sully has sole responsibility for obtaining and establishing recycling contracts, but he leaves the
day-to-day responsibility for administering and monitoring the contracts to the Contracts Office. He has closely defined
what needs to be done for each contract and how this should be monitored. ‘I needed to do this’, he said, ‘because
workers in this country are naturally lazy and lack initiative. I have found that if you don’t tell them exactly what to
do and how to do it, then it won’t get done properly.’ Most of the employees working in the Contracts Office like and
respect Sully for his business success and ability to take instant decisions when they refer a problem to him. Some
of ARC’s employees have complained about his autocratic style of leadership, but most of these have now left the
company to work for other organisations.
A few months ago, conscious that he was a self-taught manager, Sully enrolled himself on a week’s course with
Gapminding, a training consultancy which actively advocates and promotes a democratic style of management. The
course caused Sully to question his previous approach to leadership. It was also the first time, for three years, that
Sully had been out of the office during working hours for a prolonged period of time. However, each night, while he
was attending the course, he had to deal with emails from the Contracts Office listing problems with contracts and
asking him what action they should take. He became exasperated by his employees’ inability to take actions to resolve
these issues. He discussed this problem with his course tutors. They suggested that his employees would be more
effective and motivated if their jobs were enriched and that they were empowered to make decisions themselves.
On his return from the course, Sully called a staff meeting with the Contracts Office where he announced that, from
now on, employees would have responsibility for taking control actions themselves, rather than referring the problem
to him. Sully, in turn, was to focus on gaining more contracts and setting them up. However, problems with the new
arrangements arose very quickly. Fearful of making mistakes and unsure about what they were doing led to employees
discussing issues amongst themselves at length before coming to a tentative decision. The operational (field) recycling
teams were particularly critical of the new approach. One commented that ‘before, we got a clear decision very
quickly. Now decisions can take several days and appear to lack authority.’ The new approach also caused tensions
and stress within the Contracts Office and absenteeism increased.
At the next staff meeting, employees in the Contracts Office asked Sully to return to his old management style and job
responsibilities. ‘We prefer the old Sully Truin’, they said, ‘the training course has spoilt you.’ Reluctantly, Sully agreed
to their requests and so all problems are again referred up to him. However, he is unhappy with this return to the
previous way of working. He is working long hours and is concerned about his health. Also, he realises that he has
little time for obtaining and planning contracts and this is severely restricting the capacity of the company to expand.

Required:
(a) Analyse Sully Truin’s leadership style before and immediately after the training course and explain why the
change of leadership style at ARC was unsuccessful. (15 marks)

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy