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MTP - Assignment

The document outlines an individual assignment for a management theory and practice course. It provides instructions for submitting answers to several questions about management topics and analyzing a case study about data reporting issues at Nielsen Media Research. Students are asked to answer questions about managerial skills and approaches, analyze the Nielsen case study, and identify problems and recommendations.

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14 views

MTP - Assignment

The document outlines an individual assignment for a management theory and practice course. It provides instructions for submitting answers to several questions about management topics and analyzing a case study about data reporting issues at Nielsen Media Research. Students are asked to answer questions about managerial skills and approaches, analyze the Nielsen case study, and identify problems and recommendations.

Uploaded by

letagemechu29
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Individual Assignment for Management Theory and Practice

Instructions
Give a brief and to the point answer
Submit the assignment on the specified deadline
Submission data of the assignment January 27/05/2015 E.C
The assignment will be submitted in computer typed format
Submission process, you have to submit first to your class representative and then class
representatives will compile the assignment in zip and sent it to the course instructor via
email.
Weight of the assignment 30%
Coping from any sources and from friends is a serious offence

Part one: Answer the following question with sufficient explanation

1. How do you feel about having a manager’s responsibility in today’s world characterized by
uncertainty, ambiguity, and sudden changes or threats from the environment?
2. Is efficiency or effectiveness more important to organizational performance? Can managers
improve both simultaneously?
3. A college professor told her students, “The purpose of a management course is to teach
students about management, not to teach them to be managers.” Do you agree or disagree
with this statement? Discuss.
4. What do you mean by managerial skill? Explain with examples the different types of skills
required by a successful manager
5. Education can help improve the skills of a manager but experience has no alternative.” Do
you agree with the view? Discuss.
6. Can you define scientific management? Discuss the background and focus of scientific
management
7. It is often said that the failure of scientific and administrative management as advocated by
Taylor and Fayol respectively gave birth to the behavioral approach to management - Do you
agree? Put your arguments.
8. Why should managers plan and how would you describe Management by objective (MBO)?
9. Briefly discuss the nature and purpose of organizing.
10. How do you think planning in today’s organizations compares to planning 25 years ago? Do
you think planning becomes more important or less important in a world where everything is
changing fast and crises are a regular part of organizational life? Why?

Part two: Case Analysis

Page 1
Read the following information about the case and case analysis procedures and then
analyze the given case.

What is Case?

A case study is basically a true story of what happened to a business or industry over a number
of years. It tells the events, according to time, that happened, how the managers had to deal with
it and their response to the problem. A case study analysis is a written activity that summarizes,
analyses and recommends to the company what should be done/learned from the event in the
case study.
A case study analysis is not merely a descriptive but, as the term itself suggests, a critical
exercise, typically an examination of a situation or institution with view towards making
recommendations. Case study analyses are included in many courses to give students a sense of
the constraints involved in decision making. The aim of case analysis is for you to become
actively engaged in diagnosing the business issues and managerial problems posed in the case, to
propose workable solutions, and to explain and defend your assessment this is how cases provide
you with meaningful practice at being a manager

Objectives of Case Analysis


Increase your understanding of what managers should and should not do in guiding a
business to success.
Build your skills in sizing up company strengths and weaknesses
Enhance your sense of business judgment, as opposed to uncritically accepting the
authoritative crutch of the professor or “back-of-the-book” answers.
Gaining in-depth exposure to different industries and companies, thereby acquiring
something close to actual business experience.
Steps of Case Analysis
Many methods can be used to analyze case studies. The outline below, although it provides a
step by step procedure that can be applied in many situations, is not the only feasible approach.
The first thing that you will do while analysis of the case study is reading the case study
attentively at least two or three times to become familiar with the key points of the case. After,
you understand what is going on in the case; you have to follow the following steps to analyze
the case.
1. Briefly introduce the case for your readers.
2. Identify the major problems under the case clearly.
3. Mention each question under the case and answer them properly according to their
arrangement
4. Forward your specific recommendation that settle the problem in the case
Note: Based on the above guideline analyze the case given in the Nielsen Media Research

Page 2
CASE STUDY
NIELSEN MEDIA RESEARCH
David Calhoun left a job he loved as a star executive at General Electric to step into a mess as CEO
of the A. C. Nielsen Corporation. His immediate challenge: The media research unit, which is under
heavy fire from television clients such as NBC and CBS for chronic delays in reporting television ratings.
Nielsen held a conference call with major clients acknowledging the delays and promising to do better,
but the following Monday, the company again failed to report any ratings at all for the previous
day. Nielson was not delivering data to customers as promised.

What’s the big deal? Calhoun and chief of research Susan Whiting know that about $70 billion a year in
advertising revenues for the television industry depends on Nielsen ratings. Viewers might think TV
networks are in the business of providing entertainment, but management’s primary goal is providing
eyeballs for advertisers. When television managers and advertisers don’t get timely, accurate data from
Nielsen, they’re shooting in the dark with decisions about how to allocate resources. Daily meetings at
some companies are scheduled based on getting the information from Nielsen when promised. “There is
so much revenue involved over which we have no quality control,” said Alan Wurtzel, president of
research for NBC. “We don’t just use this data for analytical purposes. This is the currency of the
business.” Calhoun and other top managers are analyzing what went wrong at Nielsen. Originated in 1923
to perform surveys of the production of industrial equipment, Nielsen became a household name when it
launched its television ratings system in 1950. More than 60 years later, Nielsen still functions as a near-
monopoly in the ratings business. Yet the company could be facing a serious threat from cable and
satellite companies that are working on a way to get set-top boxes to provide real-time TV viewing data to
rival Nielsen’s. Managers see several factors involved in the problems at Nielsen, but the biggest one is
that the amount of data the company processes doubled in a year, overloading computer servers and
straining the company’s human systems. The increase has come both because of changes in how people
are watching television, such as over the Internet and other digital devices and in the amount of
information networks want. As the television business gets cut into thinner slices, clients need even more
precise data to make good decisions. Nielsen is pursuing a strategy it calls “Anytime, Anywhere Media
Measurement” to stay relevant and address new competition, but it has to get its quality problems fixed
fast. Clients understand the strain, but they have little sympathy. They want to know why Nielsen
managers didn’t anticipate the spike in data demands and plan accordingly.

Answer the following question based on the above case


1. Where do you think the problems lie at Nielsen? For example, are they primarily with the company’s
strategic goals and plans, tactical goals and plans, or operational goals and plans? With alignment of
goals and plans?
2. Do you think developing a strategy map would be a good idea for Nielsen? Why or why not?
3. If you were David Calhoun, what kind of planning processes might you implement right now to fix
this problem?
4. What you recommend to settle the problem in the case

Page 3

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