Engstrom Auto Mirror Plant:

Motivating in Good Times and Bad

Engstrom is a privately-owned business that manufactures mirrors for trucks and
automobiles. Ron Bent is the plant manager at Engstrom. On joining the company, Bent had
introduced the Scanlon Plan – An organisation-wide plan that stimulated teamwork and
cooperation, along with focusing on cost savings and motivating employees to work smarter.
However, for the past few months, the plan’s objectives were not being met.

a) Identification of issue/ objective/problem

The following problems were observed by Ron Bent and Joe Haley
 Rising costs due to slow pace of productivity.
 Product-quality issues were arising.
 Dissatisfaction among employees regarding the Scanlon Plan, as they did not receive
bonuses during the economic downturn.
 Suggestion rates of employees reduced over time.
 Workers started to distrust bonus calculations and felt that the supervisors should
receive a lower bonus.

Thus, the objective was to determine whether

 Scanlon Plan should be removed or changed

 Bent should look for another alternative, so that productivity could be sustained, and
quality could be improved until the economic downturn ended.

b) Identification of external and internal factors which affect the problem

1. Internal factors
 The dynamics happening in the Plant was not healthy, the lack of effective
communication has troubling workers for long. Their perception about the work was
getting hampered which directly reflected into their work.
 The workers in the plant were angry with the management from the Scalon plan which
has affected their morale, trust and motivation from the Organization.

2. External factors
 Economic downturn


c) Using concepts to reach at the solution or decision in the case

  Bent should know the audience (here worker) whom he is communicating to. He is
more open to transparency, but he was not aware that the workers were unable to
understand the complexity of calculations. He should have made the bonus calculation
in such a way that even a layman can get a meaning from it.

d) Action plan recommended to implement the solution/decision

 The management should focus on supporting employee development, making

employees to be a part in the change process, and to make them achieve the
organization’s goals.


e) Exhaustive list of possible options with justification to why they should or should not be
adopted