French Metals Company Case Study

The French Metals Company case is about a manager who hires outside help to train employees but doesn’t realize he is part of the problem. Emile Laurent is a French manager who works in the United States. In France the relationship is much more formal than the relationship Americans have with their bosses. Laurent felt that the informal relationships were hurting the company. He hired Don Jennings, to train the employees on problem solving techniques. He did this after coming to work early one day and seeing empty beer cans on the floor and telling some of his managers who did nothing about it. When Don Jennings comes to help most employees are receptive but he realizes Laurent is also a part of the problem. Laurent slams the table and yells …show more content…
One aspect of organizational behavior that effected the plant manager in implementing change is his poor leadership. In “Behaviors in Organizations,” leadership is defined as “the process whereby one individual influences others toward the attainment of defined group or organizational goals.” The plant manager needs to become more than a manager to be an effective manager, he must become a leader. One of the main differences between managers and leaders, is that leaders trust their employees (Greenberg 449). It’s clear in this case that the plant manager has very little trust in his employees. During the second module of brainstorming, Laurent states that the problems the employees came up with are petty, so he decides on three problems that he wants solved. By doing this he’s using more of an autocratic leadership style, which is when the leader makes all decisions and acceptance is less likely to be accepted if a solution is done autocratically (Vroom and Jago 327). A more appropriate style would be participative leadership, which is “a style of leadership in which a leader solicits opinions from subordinates before making decisions” (Greenberg 455). From personal experience I’ve worked in a warehouse for almost two years and one of my supervisors will always ask us if we have any ideas or concerns that we believe need to be tended to, my manager will ask us for information before making a decision that will affect his work force the most. When I’ve seen my ideas and co-workers ideas used as solutions I feel more comfortable offering my suggestions because I know my ideas won’t just be disregarded. In Arthur Vroom and Arthur Jago’s article “Leadership and Decision Making”, a decision model is written out and Laurent, successfully completed step one and two but did not complete the entire process. One of the steps he did not do was getting ideas from subordinates (324). I believe part of the reason he could not get answers was not only because of the production