Engstrom Auto Mirror

The root causes of the organizational issues at the Engstrom Auto Mirror plant are clear and obvious. After reading and rereading the article by Beer and Collins (2008), it appears that the main root causes of Engstrom Auto Mirror’s productivity problems are the economy, a lack of needed employees, and finally, Bent’s failure to keep open communication and positive behavioral theories like neo-classical organizational theory and systems theory alive in the organization. The economic downturn in the auto mirror industry and the subsequent layoffs of 46 workers (around 18 percent of its workforce) caused Engstrom Auto Mirror’s production and product quality to fall behind, leading to the disgruntlement of Bent’s employees. The company had promised

its employees that they would be a part of Bent’s participative management plans through the Scanlon Plan, which the economy completely derailed. Bent failed to see the import of the company’s downturn, and instead of adjusting the rules of the 1999 Scanlon Plan with the collaboration and input of his employees, he merely continued to run the company as if no downturn had occurred.

Bent’s attitude became more and more negative, and he stopped communicating well with his employees; he also stopped asking for their opinions and made decisions about the company himself, with little input from anyone else. He began to blame the employees for production and product quality issues, when it was really the fault of the downturn and ultimately his own failure to respond to the true problem. All of the later Engstrom problems can be traced back to Bent’s failure to accommodate, readjust, and realign the Scanlon Plan that was already in place at Engstrom; as a result, he became more and more confused and frustrated, as did his

employees.

Root Causes & Evidence from a Human Behavior Perspective
The reasons for the economic downturn may be unknown, but the effects of it are clear, and defined in the last section of this paper. How did Engstrom Auto Mirror decline from its position as a great, working example of the Scanlon Plan, to a malfunctioning company with little employee or management morale? As Beer and Collins (2008) noted in their case study of the plant, the Scanlon Plan is the oldest organization-wide incentive plan still used in the United States; it is meant to encourage teamwork -- something the Bent lost when he laid off 46 workers and ceased communication with his employees. Another way in which Bent quit using the Scanlon Plan as it was intended was when he began making decisions without his employees’ input. This was the death knell for participative management, the main basis of any successful Scanlon Plan. In other words, Engstrom Auto Mirror management knew what was happening behind the scenes, but its employees’ opinions, deep business functionality knowledge, and other thoughts were completely disregarded. Engstrom employees began to feel underappreciated, when in fact Bent felt awful about the economic downturn and its effects on the company; he failed to communicate this opinion, and instead all his employees saw was a general unwillingness to fix the problems at the plant.
Bent’s hand was forced when he had to lay off workers, and his guilt in this situation may have had a negative effect on his overall attitude. Without communication of his true beliefs, Bent put his authority in a precarious position, and his employees began to distrust him and the benefits of the Scanlon Plan overall. Had Bent assessed the situation, presented his opinion to the company at all levels, and invited possible solutions and ideas on how to solve the economic issues of the company, he might have been very surprised at the reaction he got. Systems theory might have conquered all, and working together, the company may have come up with a solution in which no one, or very few employees, had to be let go (Gabor & Mahoney, 2010). One solution that comes to mind is reducing employee hours from 40 per week to less, or reducing benefits. It might have even been possible to suspend the benefits program for a year until the company got back on its feet. Even if the workers who lost their jobs were a necessary evil, communication and the participative management allowed through the original Scanlon Plan implemented at Engstrom Auto Mirror might have saved the disruption of management vs. employees that Bent had to struggle with in the case study.
Impact of Poorly Aligned & Administered Human Behavior Theories & Concepts
The main impacts of the poorly aligned and administered human behavior theories and concepts that Ron Bent, Joe Haley, and all the employees at Engstrom Auto Mirror were having are based on a lack of trust, the negative behaviors that Bent was exhibiting to his Engstrom’s workers and employees, and his general exhibition of exhaustion and an inability to solve the company’s problems.

As defined in Milestone One, the issues that Engstrom Auto Mirror faced were how to improve productivity through a better production and business plan than the current Scanlon Plan, and how to restore good communication and mutual trust among management and the employees of the organization. Although Bent began his time with Engstrom using neo-classical organization theory, and was genuinely concerned about his workers and their freedom to create and grow, his recent disregard for how his behavior impacted his employees brought this theory to a grinding halt. Bent no longer listened to his employees, and therefore they no longer felt heard; the Scanlon Plan needed the proverbial “shot in the arm” that Bent recommended in Beer & Collins (2008, p. 6). This attitude of Bent’s, which was a direct result of the difficulty of the economic times, is reflected in the poor employee morale at the company. Initially, Bent was attempting to incorporate a type of systems approach to Engstrom, as well, which was abandoned as his bad attitude continued to predominate over his business decisions at the company.

This had the effect of stifling workers’ communications with each other and with other departments; mainly in conjunction with Engstrom’s management.