Managing a global team, Greg James at sun Microsystems Inc. (A) Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

IDENTIFICATION AND EXPLANATION OF ISSUES INVOLVED:

Managing a global team requires too much effort and skills, having a diversified nature being able to understand the diversified nature of the workforce of different countries.

Greg James at Sun Micro systems, Inc. is a global manager of his team consists of 45 diversified background members. After several years of successful management of his diversified team, he suddenly faces with a huge problem of mismanagement and conflicts between his whole diversified team. The mismanagement and conflicts were identified among their members after receiving a complaint from his major customer HS Holding in the event of disruption of their online banking system which later becomes more severe when it was dealt incompetently between his team members.

After the thorough analysis and several meetings and visits from the Greg James with the different countries' heads, he identifies that he is lacking face-to-face meeting with the county personnel except in US where he already lives. Due to this, the members of other country start to feel less valued and often they are considering themselves as disconnected from their organization.

When any member of the team feel less valued or find himself in an act of grievances he started to get de-motivated and negative thoughts about his company and spreading these talks to his other colleagues which in a sense creates further problems like redundancy or strikes.

There are many other issues which resulted in a conflict and mismanagement between their members like the different pay scale often lower as compare to US, different vacation policies due to different labor laws in different countries.

This problem occurred due to a breach of privacy done by one of their employee in their American division. The controls in their organizations in order to protect their privacy are weak.

American workers also have some issues regarding the job security which was not up to the mark as received by the French workers. These conflicts between the two create a problem in maintaining good communication between the workers of these two countries causing their operations to delay and stoppages.

There is no single platform for the meetings to be held. This creates timing problems between them for which the people of the UAE and India need to work late night to properly report the American division.

Also the decision making process in the Sun Micro systems Inc. is fully ineffective as because almost all the decisions has been finalized by the US division before any consult with the other divisions which also creates difference of opinion and this also results in workers of those divisions feeling less valued.

This all is due to the ineffective leadership style taken by Greg James resulting in a mismanagement which further creates miscommunication due to mismanagement and ultimately disrupting the operations of the Sun Micro systems Inc.

Also keep their records of their customers and employees up to date.

EMPIRICAL AND THOERITICAL CONTEXT RELEVANT TO STAKEHOLDERS:

In a company like Sun Micro systems there are many stakeholders which require a specific return in order to put their efforts to lead the company successfully. James Greg needs to identify their particular stakeholders which have a significant role in the development of the Sun Micro systems Inc. In this case the main stakeholders that have been identified are HS Holding, TIC and employees and its members. The effective management of these stakeholders requires the proper identification of each stakeholder (interest and power) and then develops a matrix to deal with them accordingly (Gomes, 2004). According to the matrix there are four kinds of stakeholders in each organization. The first one is least important which doesn’t require any change and follow the company accordingly; in this case TIC seems to be that stakeholder on which the Sun Micro systems Inc. requires little attention.

The second one in this case is“keep satisfied” group which has lower interest but higher power. I.e. The customers “HS holding” although there interest is low, but due to low quality service provided by the Sun Micro systems, Inc. they decided to suit the company due to their goodwill loss.

The third one is the keep informed group having low power, but high interests which are the employees, supplier etc. And Sun Micro systems, Inc. does find difficulty in managing their diversified workforce due to inefficient structure (Wood, 1995).......................

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