I. Introduction At the end of the 1990s, Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant hired Ron Bent as the new plant manager. During this time, the plant was redesigning its production lines through adopting new technology; however, the transition was problematic, resulting in long production delays, alienation of customers, and poor management response to an increasingly militant union. Strongly believing in worker incentives, Bent established the Scanlon Plan in Engstrom which boosted worker satisfaction and plant productivity (Beer & Collins, 2008, p. 2). In 2005, the industry downturn and reduced bonuses challenged the effectiveness of the Scanlon Plan as Engstrom exhibited workplace productivity, satisfaction, and quality problems. The first part of the …show more content…
First, they assumed that they could easily lure back the people they terminated. Managers should identify employee needs and provide satisfaction or the latter would move on to other companies (Newstrom, 2014, p. 122), which is exactly what the laid off employees did. Second, without analyzing the motivation and engagement of former employees, the owners insufficiently considered how the ones they fired would have felt with the company. Feeling dispensable and losing their jobs when the employees needed it the most, the company has likely damaged their esteem and status needs. Esteem and status needs are level 4 in the model of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Newstrom, 2014, p. 124). Losing their jobs while others maintained theirs would greatly affect employee perceptions of the owners and the company and diminish engagement as well as the desire to work again for the same …show more content…
First, the owners should realize that their business model is at risk if they continue going for large projects only. Applying participative leadership will open them to the importance of taking smaller projects that can take six weeks to a year, work tasks that big companies are usually not interested in which means lower competition. Second, to improve motivation and engagement despite a limited workforce, the company should form a business development group that has engineering background experience and connections with various oil and gas engineering/project companies. Decentralized leadership is particularly applicable to the company that has asynchronous workers all over the world (Muganda & Pillay, 2013). In charge of presenting proposals to different corporations, the team can position the company as an expert in performing small tasks at competitive prices in EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction). As a form of a participative aspect of the company, this team can enhance mental and emotional involvement and produce higher output, better quality, entrepreneurial innovation as well as high employee self-efficacy and satisfaction (Newstrom, 2014, p. 210). Hence, a business development team maximizes and empowers existing