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

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

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.