Case Study and Management

Organizational Change and Development at Valley Wide Utilities Company Developed by management expert Peter Drucker in the mid-20th century, management by objective (MBO) has demonstrated efficacy in a wide range of organizational settings (Allvin and Aronsson 2011). The use of MBO in certain situations, though, is not always appropriate or the effectiveness of the strategy as a management tool can be limited if certain factors are not taken into account, especially in sectors where people's welfare and even lives are at stake such as utility companies.

One company that learned this lesson the hard way was Valley Wide Utilities, a privately owned utility company that implemented MBO in an effort to improve the evaluation process for customer service representatives, engineering department managers and sales engineers. This paper provides a review of a case study concerning this company and relevant literature concerning MBO, including areas for a systematic literature review of the case study area issues, causes and potential interventions.

Finally, a discussion concerning the initial ideas that emerged concerning this case study is followed by a description of the scope and limitation of the research and a description of the task allocation for this case study.

Areas for a literature review (based on the case study area issues, causes and potential intervention) The key issue that emerged from the Valley Wide Utilities Company (hereinafter alternative "the company") case study was that the 3-year-old MBO initiative was not achieving its intended outcomes a failure to take the exigencies of utility company operations, especially during periods of inclement weather, into account. The causes of this overarching issue were two-fold as follows: 1. Management complacency concerning the problems being experienced with the MBO initiative; and, 2.

Widespread discontent among stakeholders due to unrealistic goals and the current application of the MBO initiative. Potential interventions for these causes would include fine-turning the objectives to make them more congruent with the company's mission and evaluating alternative performance review strategies that would be superior for Valley Wide's purposes. Initial ideas, scope and limitation The initial ideas about the problems at the company focused on the president, Robert Delgado and his human resources staff, John Givens and Hilda Hirsch.

The case study emphasized that the scope of the problem was system-wide and many stakeholders viewed the objectives set by Hirsh and Givens and increased by Delgado as unrealistic. Moreover, the current MBO objectives are limited because they do not take into account seasonal variations for overtime due to inclement.