HRM Case Study

CASE STUDY-1

Zafar was the manager of the systems development department of Aero Space
Inc. During his 15 years with the company, he trained many managers and
encouraged their development, only to see many of them leave the firm after
they got their advanced degrees. The company had a liberal policy of
educational reimbursement (75 per cent of tuition costs and books) and many
engineers (about 50 per cent of them had a Master's Degree in a technical field)
advantage of the educational opportunities. Ms Sridhar, an electrical engineer,
came to see her boss Zafar, who congratulated her on getting a Master's Degree
in Business Administration, which she received through the assistance of the
firm's educational programme. Ms.Sridhar, to the surprise of Zafar, said that she
was leaving the company to go to a competitor because she did not see any
opportunities for advancement in the firm.
Zafar was furious because this had happened several times before. He wanted to
see the Vice President of operations immediately and complain about the
educational reimbursement policy and the lack of a systematic
approach to staffing.

Questions for Discussion:

1. What might be the reasons that employees left after receiving their degrees
through educational reimbursement?
2. If you were the Vice President, what would you do?
3. How can such labour turnover be prevented?
CASE STUDY-2

Mr.Krishnan attended a behavior modification programme in the Indian Institute

of Management, and was impressed with the programme. He started using it on
the workrs in his department. He identified several critical behaviours,
measured and analysed them, and used a positive reinforcement / extension
intervention strategy His evaluation showed a significant improvement in the
performance of his department and he got stuck to the programme. Infact, he
was seen commenting to another supervisor. "This contingent reinforcement
method really works better than the human relation difficult to understand
anybody. I am nice to people only contingent upon their good performance.
That makes a lot of sense than just being good to everybody. The other
supervisor commented "you are being reinforced for using thereinforcement
technique on your people. Krishnan said, "yes, surely, behaviour that is
reinforced will strength and repeat itself. A few weeks later, the Plant Manager,
Mr. Bose, called Mr. Krishnan and told him "your department has shown
substantial increase in performance since you completed the behaviour
modification programme. I have sent our industrial engineer to your department
to analyse your standards. From the report, it looks like we will have to adjust
your rates upward by ten percent. Otherwise we have topay too much incentive
pay. I hope you will use the behaviour modification technique to break the news
to your people. Good luck, and keep up the good work.

Questions:
1. What do you think will be Mr. Krishnan's reaction to Mr. Bose, now and in
the future? How do you think his subordinates will react to this?
2. How can behaviour modification be used in the new situation with revised
rates?
3. Consider this situation in the context of different approaches to
modification and leadership.