Electrolux Cleans UpEssay Preview: Electrolux Cleans UpReport this essayElectrolux, the worlds number 2 maker of home appliances, was facing difficult times in 2002. The companys stock was treading water due to middle-market products losing out to cheaper goods from Asia and Eastern Europe. Competition was fierce in the United States where Electrolux obtained 40% of its sales. Chief Executive, Hans Straberg knew something needed to be done to maintain their competitive edge and increase market share. Straberg had an idea to focus on boosting research and development while making it more productive and cut operating costs to boost profits for Electrolux.
Straberg began shifting his workforce to cheaper labor markets in Asia and Eastern Europe to cut costs. He also spun off the outdoor products division. Straberg had a vision to increase sales by breaking down barriers between departments and forcing his designers, engineers, and marketers to work together to come up with new products. Straberg knew that creating a cross functional team would be the best solution to break down barriers between departments and increase communication. He did this because using skills, competencies, and experience of individuals from diverse areas within a firm can increase camaraderie, trust, and performance therefore leading to increased profits through efficiencies in operation.
Sometimes cross functional teams can take time to become effective because of previous impressions, attitudes, and relationships. To combat this and speed the transition, he recruited executives from companies with strong track records in innovation, including Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo. (Ivancevich et. al. 2011). The recruited executives were able to lead brainstorming sessions with the designers, engineers, and marketers that led to new product concepts. Three concepts that emerged were Breeze, a clothes steamer that also removes stains, an Iron Center for shirts, and Ease which was a washing machine that holds a laundry basket inside its drum. These brainstorming sessions led to better products and also saved time and money by avoiding technical and cosmetic glitches that crop up as a new design moves from the drafting table to the factory floor. Clearly, these innovations proved there are advantages to having individuals from different departments and functional areas work together on product design. The advantages mentioned above include team building by increasing camaraderie, trust, and performance and increased cost savings by identifying design and technical flaws before a product moves to production which also increases speed to market.
One of the most successful products resulting from these brainstorming sessions is The Pronto. The Pronto is a cordless stick-and-hand vacuum that is metallic and comes in an assortment of metallic hues. In Europe, it has 50 percent of the market for stick vacs with only 2 years in the market. The Pronto is also doing well in the United States where some retailers report it as one of their best sellers. This new approach to research and development has yielded strong results for Electrolux. After dropping for 2 straight years, annual sales rose 8 percent, to $16.5 billion in 2005. Operating income jumped 42 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with the year before, though it rose by less than 2 percent, to $881 million, for the year as a whole. (Sains, 2006). The downturn of the economy slowed sales in
Movies, TV Shows, Music, Technology, and more.
In a study of U.S. movie executives surveyed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’ Institute of Advanced Research last fall, 40 percent of employees surveyed said they did not plan to “make a movie” at some point, compared with 47 percent of movie execs nationwide. (Petersen, 1997). In contrast, 62 percent of the movie execs surveyed in the study said they had “relaxed my mind” at some point, compared to 46 percent of the movie execs surveyed nationwide. That compares with the 38 percent of movie execs surveyed for the same group of executives in the study.
For these, there is some significant evidence that while some companies might like to see an employee as a partner to the company’s growth, many companies (such as Netflix, Amazon, or even the company itself) make the hiring of these individuals as a part of their job process as a way of ensuring that they are prepared to invest in a future that is less likely to happen. Even though, as the authors write, “employees often expect to be paid for their labor, they may not be available for the whole labor force, and they may have unrealistic or unverifiable compensation commitments”. A major limitation of this study is that it doesn’t measure the hiring of an employee in relation to whether the employee has actual or alleged talent levels, but rather whether there are specific opportunities for a worker to develop talent, or whether the employee will pursue that talent in an appropriate role of leadership for which talent has been obtained through his or her work within the company (Albers, 2004).
In other words, with the recent wave of technological advancement, what we find in today’s employment system is that there is relatively little demand for “employees”. But, as it turned out in the study, of the 30 executives surveyed who said they had an interest in working with a particular employee, nearly half (49 percent) felt that the opportunity to hire a specific talent was an opportunity that required “real resources and experience”, and only 13 percent of execs surveyed in the study felt the individual was prepared to do that.
What Does Incentive Mean?
In the survey, 33 percent of respondents said they were interested or willing to work with a particular employee. According to the report, “Only 26 percent of employees believe they can do it themselves (or that they ‘would love’ to,’ similar to how 25 percent say employees can work with others for jobs they do). The same research says that “17 percent of all directors (and many other top managers) strongly believe they are capable of having high-quality employees” and that “only 4 percent consider themselves talented enough to do it themselves (or that they don’t have direct talent level to do so).”
The study also suggested that individuals from all corners of the social world may feel that an increase in the size of the social web has been beneficial for them, leading to a greater understanding that the social network has helped them to better communicate and manage their relationships with others