IIBMS MBA EXAMINATION CASE STUDY ANSWER SHEETS PROVIDED WHATSAPP OR TELEGRAM 91 9924764558
IIBMS QUESTION PAPER
Subject – General Management
Marks - 100
Attempt Any Four Case Study
CASE – 1 Your Job and Your Passion—You Can Pursue
Both!
The 21st century offers many challenges
to every one of us. As more firms go global, as more economies interconnect,
and as the Web blasts away boundaries to communication, we become more informed
citizens. This interconnectedness means that the organizations you work for
will require you to develop both general and specialized knowledge—such as
speaking multiple languages, using various software applications, or
understanding details of financial transactions. You will have to develop
general management skills to foster your ability to be self-reliant and thrive
in a changing market-place. And here’s the exciting part: As you build both
types of knowledge, you may be able to integrate your growing expertise with
the causes or activities you care most about. Or, your career adventure may
lead you to a new passion.
Former presidents George H. W. Bush
and Bill Clinton are well known for combining their management skills—running a
country—with their passion for helping people around the world. Together they
have raised funds to assist disaster victims, those with HIV/AIDS, and others
in need. Jake Burton turned his love of snow sports into an entire industry
when he founded Burton Snowboards. Annie Withey poured her business and
marketing knowledge into her two famous business ventures: Smartfood and
Annie’s Homegrown. Both products were the result of her passion for healthful
foods made from organic ingredients.
As you enter the workforce, you may
have no idea where your career path will lead. You may be asking yourself, “How
will I fit in?” “Where will I live?” “How much will I earn?” “Where will my
business and personal careers evolve as the world continuous to change at such
a fast pace?” If you are feeling nervous because you don’t know the answers to
these questions yet, relax. A career is a journey, not a single destination.
You may have one type of career or several. It is likely you will work for
several organisations, or you may run one or more businesses of your own.
As you ask yourself what you want to
do and where you want to be, take a few minutes to review the chapter and its
main topics. Think about your personality, what you like and dislike, what you
know and what you want to learn, what you fear and what you dream. Then try the
following exercise.
Questions
1.
Create
a three-column chart in which the first column lists nonmanagement skills you
have. Are you good at travel? Do you know how to build furniture? Are you a
whiz at sports statistics? Are you an innovative cook? Do you play video games
for hours? In the second column, list the causes or activities about which you
are passionate. These may dovetail with the first list, but they might not.
2.
Once
you have you two columns complete, draw lines between entries that seem
compatible. If you are good at building furniture, you might have also listed a
concern about families who are homeless. Remember that not all entries will
find a match—the idea is to begin finding some connections.
3.
In the
third column, generate a list of firms or organizations you know about that
reflect your interests. If you are good at building furniture, you might be
interested working for the Habitat for Humanity organization, or you might find
yourself gravitating towards a furniture retailer like Ikea or Ethan Allen. You
can do further research on organizations via Internet or business
publications.
CASE –
2 Biyani – Pioneering a Retailing
Revolution in India
“I use people as hands and legs. I prefer to do thinking around here.”
─ Kishore Biyani, CEO & MD, Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd.
Kishore Biyani (Biyani), CEO& MD of
Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd., planned to have 30 Food Bazaar outlets, 22
outlets in Big Bazaar, 21 Pantaloons outlets, and four seamless malls under the
Central logo, by the end of 2005. He also planned to launch at least three
businesses every year and had already selected music, footwear and car
accessories as his next areas of investments. He was already the top retailer
in India followed by Raghu Pillai of RPG. As of 2004, Biyani headed a company
that had a turnover of Rs 6,500 million and operated 13 Pantaloon apparel
stores, 9 Big Bazaars, 13 Food Bazaars, and 3 seamless malls (Central), one
each located in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Pune.
Biyani’s journey from a person who
looked after his family business to India’s top retailer in 1987, when he
launched Manz Wear Pvt. Ltd. The company launched one of the first readymade
trousers brands – ‘Pantaloon’ – in the country. The company also launched its
first jeans brand called ‘Bare’ in 1989. On September 20, 1991, Manz Wear Pvt.
Ltd. went public and on September 25, 1992, it changed its name to Pantaloon
Fashions (India) Limited (PFIL). ‘John Miller’ was the first formal shirt brand
from PFIL.
The company opened its first apparel
stores, called ‘Pantaloons’ at Kolkata in August 1997. The stores generated Rs
70 million. Biyani then realized the potential of the Indian market and started
to aggressively tap it. Accordingly, Biyani decided to expand into other
segments of retailing besides apparel. To reflect this change in focus, the
company changed its name to Pantaloon Retail (India) Limited (PRIL) in July
1999 and set itself a target of achieving Rs 10 billion in sales by June 2005.
In course of time he launched three other retail formats -- Big Bazaar, Food
Bazaar, and Central.
Biyani didn’t believe in copying
ideas from western retailers. He was critical of his peers who felt just copied
ideas form the west without making any effort to mold them to Indian
conditions. He ensured that his store formats such as Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar,
and Pantaloons were all suited to the purchasing style of Indian consumers.
Biyani was a huge risk taker and his
planning was always different from the conventional way of doing business. This
was also one of the factors that had prompted Biyani to move away from his
father’s conventional way of doing business. During the initial stages of his
success, his risk-taking attitude sometimes had the effect of turning away financiers.
The biggest risk that Biyani took was in opening Big Bazaar in Mumbai in 2001.
The company needed money to expand Big Bazaar’s operations. However, it had
profits of only Rs 40 million with a low share price at eighteen rupees.
Therefore, Biyani could not raise money through equity. In light of this
situation, Biyani took a loan of Rs 1,200 million from ICICI for launching the
operations of Big Bazaar, which increased his debt exposure. However, Big
Bazaar proved to be a resounding success with 100,000 customer visits in its
first week of operations. According to analysts, if Big Bazaar had failed,
Biyani would have landed in a severe debt crisis. The success of Big Bazaar not
only increased the company profits, it also changed the perception of investors.
Many people criticized Biyani for not
delegating authority and Biyani himself accepted the criticism. He said, “I use
people as hands and legs. I prefer to do the thinking around here.” He
preferred taking individual decision on activities like strategic planning,
ideas for other ventures, and other important issues. It was because of this
that managers like Kush Medhora of Westside were initially apprehensive about
joining Biyani’s business. However, Biyani changed his attitude gradually with
the launch of Big Bazaar, Food Bazaar, and Central and appointed different
people for managing different business units.
Biyani believed in leading a simple
life and in being simply dressed. His vision came from his diverse reading
connected to retailing and other areas. He made it a point to visit each of his
stores across the country. He aimed to spend at least seven hours a week at the
stores. In the stores, he would stand at a corner and observe people. He also
walked on streets, met common people, and talked to local leaders to plan and
put up new products in his stores. Each of his stores was set with a weekly
target, which was reviewed every Monday. Whenever a new store was opened, the
details of its operations during the first 45 days were to be sent to him.
Sometimes, he suggested remedies to some problems. Biyani believed in extensive
advertising to make more people know about the product. His decision making was
quick and devoid of unnecessary delays. Biyani was also a good learner and
learned quickly from his mistakes. He planned to improve inventory management
through responding effectively to the demands of the customers rather than
forecasting them, as he felt that forecasting would pile up the inventory in
this dynamic market.
Questions
1.
The tremendous
success of the ‘Pantaloons’, ‘Big Bazaar’ and ‘Food Bazaar’ retailing formats,
easily made PRIL the number one retailer in India by early 2004, in terms of
turnover and retail area occupied by its outlets. Explain how Biyani is further
planning to consolidate his businesses.
2.
“Our
striving toward looking at the Indian market differently and strategizing with
the evolving customer helped us perform better.” What other qualities of
Kishore Biyani do you think were instrumental in making him top retailer of
India?
CASE –
3 The New Frontier for Fresh Foods
Supermarkets
Fresh Foods Supermarket is a grocery
store chain that was established in the Southeast 20 years ago. The company is
now beginning to expand to other regions of the United States. First, the firm
opened new stores along the eastern seaboard, gradually working its way up
through Maryland and Washington, DC, then through New York and New jersey, and
on into Connecticut and Massachusetts. It has yet to reach the northern New
England states, but executives have decided to turn their attention to the
Southwest, particularly because of the growth of population there.
Vivian Noble, the manager of one of
the chain’s most successful stores in the Atlanta area, has been asked to
relocate to Phoenix, Arizona, to open and run a new Fresh Foods Supermarket.
She has decided to accept the job, but she knows it will be a challenge. As an
African American woman, she has faced some prejudice during her career, but she
refuses to be stopped by a glass ceiling or any other barrier. She understands
that she will be living and working in an area where several cultures combine
and collide, and she will be hiring and managing a diverse workforce. Noble has
the support of top management at Fresh Foods, which wants the store to reflect
the surrounding community—in both staff makeup and product selection. So she
will be looking to hire employees with Hispanic and Native American roots, as
well as older workers who can relate to the many retired residents in the area.
And she will be seeking their inputs on the selection of certain food products,
including ethnic brands, so that customers know they can buy what they need and
want a Fresh Foods.
In addition, Noble wants to make sure
that Fresh Foods provides services above and beyond those of a standard
supermarket to attract local consumers. For instance, she wants the store to
offer free delivery of groceries to home-bound customers who are either senior
citizens or physically disabled. She wants to be sure that the store has enough
bilingual employees to translate for and otherwise assist customers who speak
little or no English. Noble believes that she is a pioneer of sorts, guiding
Fresh Foods Supermarkets into a new frontier. “The sky is almost blue here,”
she says of her new home state. “And there’s no glass ceiling between me and
the sky.”
Questions
1.
What
steps can Vivian Noble take to recruit and develop her new workforce?
2.
What
other ways can Noble help her company reach out to the community?
3.
How
will Fresh Foods Supermarkets as whole benefit from successfully moving into
this new region of the country?
CASE –
4 The Law Offices of Jeter, Jackson,
Guidry, and Boyer
THE
EVOLUTION OF THE FIRM
David
Jeter and Nate Jackson started a small general law practice in 1992 near
Sacramento, California. Prior to that, the two had spent five years in the
district attorney’s office after completing their formal schooling. What began
as a small partnership—just the two attorneys and a paralegal/assistant—had now
grown into a practice that employed more than 27 people in three separated
towns. The current staff included 18 attorneys (three of whom have become
partners), three paralegals, and six secretaries.
For the first time in the firm’s
existence, the partners felt that they were losing control of their overall
operation. The firm’s current caseload, number of employees, number of clients,
travel requirements, and facilities management needs had grown far beyond anything
that the original partners had ever imagined.
Attorney Jeter called a meeting of
the partners to discuss the matter. Before the meeting, opinions about the
pressing problems of the day and proposed solutions were sought from the entire
staff. The meeting resulted in a formal decision to create a new position,
general manager of operations. The partners proceeded to compose a job
description and job announcement for recruiting purposes.
Highlights and responsibilities of
the job description include:
· Supervising day-to-day office personnel and
operations (phones, meetings, word processing, mail, billings, payroll, general
overhead, and maintenance).
· Improving customer relations (more
expeditious processing of cases and clients).
· Expanding the customer base.
· Enhancing relations with the local
communities.
· Managing the annual budget and related
incentive programs.
· Maintaining annual growth in sales of 10
percent while maintaining or exceeding the current profit margin.
The
general manager will provide an annual executive summary to the partners, along
with specific action plans for improvement and change. A search committee was
formed, and two months later the new position was offered to Brad Howser, a
longtime administrator from the insurance industry seeking a final career
change and a return to his California roots. Howser made it clear that he was
willing to make a five-year commitment to the position and would then likely
retire.
Things got off to a quiet and
uneventful start as Howser spent few months just getting to know the staff,
observing day-today operations; and reviewing and analyzing assorted client and
attorney data and history, financial spreadsheets, and so on.
About six months into the position,
Howser became more outspoken and assertive with the staff and established
several new operational rules and procedures. He began by changing the regular
working hours. The firm previously had a flex schedule in place that allowed
employees to begin and end the workday at their choosing within given
parameters. Howser did not care for such a “loose schedule” and now required
that all office personnel work from 9:00 to 5:00 each day. A few staff member
were unhappy about this and complained to Howser, who matter-of-factly informed
them that “this is the new rule that everyone is expected to follow, and anyone
who could or would not comply should probably look for another job.” Sylvia
Bronson, an administrative assistant who had been with the firm for several
years, was particularly unhappy about this change. She arranged for a private
meeting with Howser to discuss her child care circumstances and the difficulty
that the new schedule presented. Howser seemed to listen half-heartedly and at
one point told Bronson that “assistance are essentially a-dime-a-dozen and are
readily available.” Bronson was seen leaving the office in tears that day.
Howser was not happy with the average
length of time that it took to receive payments for services rendered to the
firm’s clients (accounts receivable). A closer look showed that 30 percent of
the clients paid their bills in 30 days or less, 60 percent paid in 30 to 60
days, and the remaining 10 percent stretched it out to as many as 120 days. Howser composed a letter
that was sent to all clients whose outstanding invoices exceeded 30 days. The
strongly worded letter demanded immediate payment in full and went on to
indicate that legal action might be taken against anyone who did not respond in
timely fashion. While a small number of “late” payments were received soon
after the mailing, the firm received an even larger number of letters and phone
calls from angry clients, some of whom had been with the firm since its
inception.
Howser was given an advertising and
promotion budget for purposes of expanding the client base. One of the
paralegals suggested that those expenditures should be carefully planned and
that the firm had several attorneys who knew the local markets quite well and
could probably offer some insights and ideas on the subject. Howser thought
about this briefly and then decided to go it alone, reasoning that most
attorneys know little or nothing about marketing.
In an attempt to “bring all of the
people together to form a team,” Howser established weekly staff meetings.
These mandatory, hour-long sessions were run by Howser, who presented a series
of overhead slides, handouts, and lectures about “some of the proven management
techniques that were successful in the insurance industry.” The meetings
typically ran past the allotted time frame and rarely if ever covered all of
the agenda items.
Howser spent some of his time
“enhancing community relations.” He was very generous with many local groups
such as the historical society, the garden clubs, the recreational sports
programs, the middle-and high-school band programs, and others. In less than
six months he had written checks and authorized donations totaling more than
$25,000. He was delighted about all this and was certain that such gestures of
goodwill would pay off handsomely in the future.
As for the budget, Howser carefully
reviewed each line item in search of ways to increase revenues and cut
expenses. He then proceeded to increase the expected base or quota for
attorney’s monthly billable hours, thus directly affecting their profit sharing
and bonus program. On the other side, he significantly reduced the attorneys’
annual budget for travel, meals, and entertainment. He considered these to be
frivolous and unnecessary. Howser decided that one of the two full-time
administrative assistant positions in each office should be reduced to
part-time with no benefits. He saw no reason why the current workload could not
be completed within this model. Howser wrapped up his initial financial review
and action plan by posting notices throughout each office with new rules
regarding the use of copy machines, phones, and supplies.
Howser completed the first year of
his tenure with the required executive summary report to the partners that
included his analysis of the current status of each department and his action
plan. The partners were initially impressed with both Howser’s approach to the
new job and with the changes that he made. They all seemed to make sense and
were directly in line with the key components of his job description. At the
same time, “the office rumor mill and grape vine” had “heated up” considerably.
Company morale, which had been quite high, was now clearly waning. The water
coolers and hallways became the frequent meeting places of disgruntled
employees.
As for the marketplace, while the
partner did not expect to see an immediate influx of new clients, they
certainly did not expect to see shrinkage in their existing client base. A
number of individual and corporate clients took their business elsewhere, still
fuming over the letter they had received.
The partners met with Howser to
discuss the situation. Howser urged them to “sit tight and ride out the storm.”
He had seen this happen before and had no doubt that in the long run the firm
would achieve all of its goals. Howser pointed out that people in general are
resistant to change. The partners met for drinks later that day and looked at
each other with a great sense of uncertainty. Should they ride out the storm as
Howser suggested? Had they done the right thing in creating the position and
hiring Howser? What had started as a seemingly, wise, logical, and smooth
sequence of events had now become a crisis.
Questions
1.
Do you
agree with Howser’s suggestion to “sit tight and ride out the storm,” or should
the partners take some action immediately? If so, what actions specifically?
2.
Assume
that the creation of the GM—Operation position was a good decision. What
leadership style and type of individual would you try to place in this
position?
3.
Consider
your own leadership style. What types of positions and situations should you
seek? What types of positions and situation should you seek to avoid? Why?
CASE –
5 The Grizzly Bear Lodge
Diane and Rudy Conrad own a small
lodge outside Yellowstone National Park. Their lodge has 15 rooms that can
accommodate up to 40 guests, with some rooms set up for families. Diane and
Rudy serve a continental breakfast on weekdays and a full breakfast on weekends,
included in the room they charge. Their busy season runs from May through
September, but they remain open until Thanksgiving and reopen in April for a
short spring season. They currently employ one cook and two waitpersons for the
breakfasts on weekends, handling the other breakfasts themselves. They also
have several housekeeping staff members, a groundkeeper, and a front-desk
employee. The Conrads take pride in the efficiency of their operation,
including the loyalty of their employees, which they attribute to their own
form of clan control. If a guest needs something—whether it’s a breakfast
catered to a special diet or an extra set of towels—Grizzly Bear workers are
empowered to supply it.
The Conrads are considering expanding
their business. They have been offered the opportunity to buy the property next
door, which would give them the space to build an annex containing an
additional 20 rooms. Currently, their annual sales total $300,000. With
expenses running $230,000—including mortgage, payroll, maintenance, and so
forth—the Conrads’ annual income is $70,000. They want to expand and make
improvements without cutting back on the personal service they offer to their
guests. In fact, in addition to hiring more staff to handle the larger facility,
they are considering collaborating with more local business to offer guided
rafting, fishing, hiking, and horseback riding trips. They also want to expand
their food service to include dinner during the high season, which means
renovating the restaurant area of the lodge and hiring more kitchen and wait
staff. Ultimately, the Conrads would like the lodge to open year-round,
offering guests opportunities to cross-country ski, ride snow-mobiles, or hike
in winter. They hope to offer holiday packages for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and
New Year’s celebrations in the great outdoors. The Conrads report that their
employees are enthusiastic about their plans and want to stay with them through
the expansion process. “This is our dream business,” says Rudy. “We’re only at
the beginning.”
Questions
1.
Discuss
how Rudy and Diane can use feedforward, concurrent, and feedback controls both
now and in future at the Grizzly Bear Lodge to ensure their guests’
satisfaction.
2.
What
might be some of the fundamental budgetary considerations the Conrads would
have as they plan the expansion of their logic?
3.
Describe
how the Conrads could use market controls plans and implement their
expansion.
