COMSATS University Islamabad

Sahiwal Campus
(Department of Management Sciences)

Course Title: Introduction to Management Course Code: MGT101 Credit Hours: 3

Course Instructor: Syed Ali Ashiq Kirmani Programme Name: BSBA/BAF
Semester: 1 Batch: SP21 Section: Date: July, 2021
Time Allowed: 6 hours Maximum Marks: 50
Student’s Name: Reg. No. CUI/ /SWL
Important Instructions / Guidelines:
Read the question paper carefully and answer the questions according to their statements.
Mobile phones are not allowed. Calculators must not have any data/equations etc. in their memory.
Terminal Examination Spring-2021

OBJECTIVE

1. After identifying a problem, the next step in the decision-making process is ________.
A) identifying decision criteria
B) allocating weights to decision criteria
C) analyzing alternatives
D) developing alternatives
2. Abby listened to the weather report this morning before work. As a result, she drove her
car and carried an umbrella instead of riding her motorcycle to work. Whether she realizes it or
not, Abby ________.
A) analyzed criteria
B) implemented a decision
C) assigned weights to criteria
D) evaluated a decision
3. Belinda wants to introduce a new model to the product line. Three models are being
developed. Belinda can choose only one. She has decided to focus on target market size,
production costs, and net profits. These are Belinda's ________.
A) alternatives
B) criterion weights
C) decision criteria
D) problems
4. To determine the ________, a manager must determine what is relevant or important to
resolving a problem.
A) bounded rationality of a decision
B) escalation of commitment
C) cost of implementation
D) decision criteria
5. Managers play an important role in dealing with various challenges being faced by
organizations today. TRUE/FALSE

[5 points]

SUBJECTIVE

Question No. 1

The Coca-Cola Company (Coke) is in a league by itself.47 As the world’s largest and number
one nonalcoholic beverage company, Coke makes or licenses more than 3,500 drinks in more
than 200 countries. Coke has built 15 billion-dollar brands and also claims four of the top five
soft-drink brands (Coke, Diet Coke, Fanta, and Sprite).
Although it fell to the number-three spot in 2013, each year since 2001, global brand consulting
firm Interbrand, in conjunction with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, has identified Coke as the
number-one best global brand. Coke’s executives and managers are focusing on ambitious, long-
term growth for the company—doubling Coke’s business
by 2020. A big part of achieving this goal is building up its Simply Orange juice business into a
powerful global juice brand. Decision making is playing a crucial role as managers try to beat
rival PepsiCo, which has a 40 percent market share in the not-from-concentrate juice category
compared to Coke’s 28 percent share. And those managers aren’t leaving anything to chance in
this hot—umm, cold—pursuit!

You’d think that making orange juice (OJ) would be relatively simple—pick, squeeze, pour.
While that would probably be the case in your own kitchen, in Coke’s case, that glass of 100
percent OJ is possible only through “satellite imagery, complicated data algorithms, and even a
juice pipeline.” The purchasing director for Coke’s
massive Florida juice packaging facility says, “Mother Nature doesn’t like to be standardized.”

Yet, standardization is what it takes for Coke to make this work profitably. And producing a
juice beverage is far more complicated than bottling soda. Using what it calls its “Black Book
model,” Coke wants to ensure that customers have consistently fresh, tasty OJ 12 months a year
despite a peak growing season that’s only three months long. To help in this, Coke is relying on a
“revenue analytic consultant.” He says, “Orange juice is definitely one of the most complex
applications of business analytics.” To consistently deliver an optimal blend given the challenges
of nature requires some 1 quintillion (that’s 1 followed by 18 zeroes) decisions.

There’s no secret formula to Black Book, it’s simply an algorithm. It includes detailed data about
the more than 600 different flavors that make up an orange and about customer preferences. This
data is correlated to a profile of each batch of raw juice. The algorithm then determines how to
blend batches to match a certain taste and consistency. At the juice bottling plant, “blend
technicians carry out Black Book instructions prior to bottling.” The weekly OJ recipe they use is
“tweaked” constantly.
Black Book also includes data on external factors such as weather patterns, crop yields, and other
cost pressures. This is useful for Coke’s decision makers as they ensure they’ll have enough
supplies for at least 15 months. One Coke executive says, “If we have a hurricane or freeze, we
can quickly replan the business in 5 or 10 minutes just because we’ve mathematically modeled
it.”

Questions
1. Which decisions in this story could be considered unstructured problems? Structured
problems?
2. How does the Black Book help Coke’s managers and other employees indecision making?
3. What does Coke’s big data have to do with its goals?
4. Do some research on revenue analytics. What is it? How can it help managers make better
decisions?

[15 points]
Question No. 2

Google doesn’t do anything halfway. So when it decided to “build a better boss,” it did what it
does best . . . look at data.54 Using data from performance reviews, feedback surveys, and
supporting papers turned in for individuals being nominated for top-manager awards, Google
tried to find what a great boss is and does. The project, dubbed Project Oxygen, examined some
100 variables and ultimately identified eight characteristics or habits of Google’s most effective
managers. Here are the “big eight”:
• Provide an unambiguous vision of the future;
• Help individuals to reach their long-term work goals;
• Express interest in employees’ well-being;
• Insure you have the necessary technical abilities to support employee efforts;
• Display effective communication skills, especially listening;
• Provide coaching support when needed;
• Focus on being productive and on end results; and
• Avoid over-managing; let your team be responsible.
At first glance, you’re probably thinking that these eight attributes seem pretty simplistic and
obvious, and you may be wondering why Google spent all this time and effort to uncover these.
Even Google’s vice president for people operations, Laszlo Bock, said, “My first reaction was,
that’s it?” Another writer described it as “reading like a whiteboard gag from an episode of The
Office.” But, as the old saying goes, there was more to this list than meets the eye. When Bock
and his team began looking closer and rank ordering the eight items by importance, Project
Oxygen got interesting—a lot more interesting! And to understand this, you have to understand
something about Google’s approach to management since its founding in 1999. Plain and simple,
managers were encouraged
to “leave people alone. Let the engineers do their stuff. If they become stuck, they’ll ask their
bosses, whose deep technical expertise propelled them to management in the first place.” It’s not
hard to see what Google wanted its managers to be—outstanding technical specialists. Mr. Bock
explains, “In the Google context, we’d always believed
that to be a manager, particularly on the engineering side, you need to be as deep or deeper a
technical expert than the people who work for you.” However, Project Oxygen revealed that
technical expertise was ranked number eight (very last) on the list. So, here’s the complete list
from most important to least important, along with
what each characteristic entails:
• Provide coaching support when needed (provide specific feedback and have regular one-on-
one meetings with employees; offer solutions tailored to each employee’s strengths)
• Avoid over-managing; let your team be responsible (give employees space to tackle problems
themselves, but be available to offer advice)
• Express interest in employees’ well-being (make new team members feel welcome and get to
know your employees as people)
• Focus on being productive and on end results (focus on helping the team achieve its goals by
prioritizing work and getting rid of obstacles)
• Display good communication skills, especially listening (learn to listen and to share
information; encourage open dialogue and pay attention to the team’s concerns)
• Help individuals to reach their long-term work goals (notice employees’ efforts so they can see
how their hard work is furthering their careers; appreciate employees’ efforts and make that
appreciation known)
• Provide an unambiguous vision of the future (lead the team but keep everyone involved in
developing and working towards the team’s vision)
• Insure you have the necessary technical abilities to support employee efforts (understand the
challenges facing the team and be able to help team members solve problems)

Now, managers at Google aren’t just encouraged to be great manager involves. And the company
is doing its part as well. Using the list, Google started training managers, as well as providing
individual coaching and performance review sessions. You can say that Project Oxygen breathed
new life into Google’s managers. Bock says the company’s efforts paid off quickly. “We were
able to have a statistically significant improvement in manager quality for 75 percent of our
worst-performing managers.”

Questions
1. Describe the findings of Project Oxygen using the functions approach, Mintzberg’s roles
approach, and the skills approach.
2. Are you surprised at what Google found out about “building a better boss?” Explain your
answer.
3. What’s the difference between encouraging managers to be great managers and knowing what
being a great manager involves?
4. What could other companies learn from Google’s experiences?
5. Would you want to work for a company like Google? Why or why not?

[20 points]

Question No. 3
We know that too much stress can be bad for our health and well-being. That connection has
proved itself painfully and tragically in two high-profile situations, at France Télécom and at
China’s Foxconn Technology Group.
Between 2008 and 2011, more than 50 people at France Télécom committed suicide. The
situation captured the attention of the worldwide media, the public, and the French government
because many of the suicides and more than a dozen failed suicide attempts were attributed to
work-related problems. Although France has a higher suicide rate than any other large Western
country, this scenario is particularly troublesome. So much so, that the Paris prosecutor’s office
opened an investigation of the company over accusations of psychological harassment. The
judicial inquiry began with a complaint by the union Solidares Unitaires Démocratiques against
France Télécom’s former chief executive and two members of his top management team.
The complaint accused management of conducting a “pathogenic restructuring.” Excerpts of the
inspector’s report, although not public, were published in the French media and described a
situation in which the company used various forms of psychological pressure in an effort to
eliminate 22,000 jobs. Company doctors alerted management
about the possible psychological dangers of the stress that could accompany such drastic change.
“The spate of suicides highlighted a quirk at the heart of French society: Even with robust labor
protection, workers see themselves as profoundly insecure in the face of globalization, with
many complaining about being pushed beyond
their limits.” A company lawyer denied that France Télécom had systematically pressured
employees to leave.
Company executives realized they needed to take drastic measures to address the issue. One of
the first changes was a new CEO, Stéphane Richard, who said his priority “would be to rebuild
the morale of staff who have been through trauma, suffering and much worse.” The company
halted some workplace practices identified as particularly disruptive, like involuntary transfers,
and began encouraging more supportive practices, including working from home. A company
spokesperson says the company has completed two of six agreements with unions that cover a
wide range of workplace issues such as mobility, work-life balance, and stress. Yet, France isn’t
the only country dealing with worker suicides.
Workplace conditions at China’s Foxconn Technology Group—the world’s largest maker of
electronic components, which employs over a million workers—were strongly criticized after a
series of suicides among young workers. In what was described as sweatshop conditions,
employees often worked 76-hour weeks for low wages. Some workers said they had to stand so
long, their legs swelled until they could barely walk. Other complaints revolved around child
labor and hazardous waste. One worker said, “The assembly line ran very fast and after just one
morning we all had blisters and the skin on our hand was black. The factory was also really
choked with dust and no one could bear it.” In early 2012, Apple and Foxconn reached an
agreement to improve conditions for the workers assembling iPhones and iPads. According to
the agreement, Foxconn would hire thousands of new workers to reduce overtime
work, improve safety protocols, and upgrade housing and other amenities. It’s also reported that
the company has launched a $224 million project to build one million robots in the next three
years to use in its factories. This “empire of robots” will replace half a million Foxconn
employees and move them “higher up the value chain.”

Questions
1. What is your reaction to the situations described in this case? What factors, both inside the
companies and externally, appear to have contributed to this situation?
2. What appeared to be happening in the France Télécom’s workplace? What stress symptoms
might have alerted managers to a problem?
3. Should managers be free to make decisions that are in the best interests of the company
without worrying about employee reactions? Discuss. What are the implications for managing
change?
4. What are France Télécom’s and Foxconn’s executives doing to address the situation? Do you
think it’s enough? Are there other actions they might take? If so, describe those actions. If not,
why not?
5. What could other companies and managers learn from this situation?

[20 points]