Northern Essex Community College Organizational Honeywell Case Study

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User Generated

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alpenml

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Business Finance

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Northern Essex Community College

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For this assignment you are to read the case study below about Honeywell International Inc., (Links to an external site.) a US based, publicly owned conglomerate. After reading the case study, respond to the questions below. Please sure to follow the very specific submission instructions at the end of the prompt here.

Case Study - Honeywell:

Honeywell has a history of evolving through acquisitions into high growth sectors of related business, and there is no indication that this trend is slowing. In fact, the company has placed increased emphasis on software and other businesses that address challenges related to energy, security, safety, productivity, and urbanization. However, while Honeywell continues to grow and evolve, the company also faces mounting pressure in some of its businesses an has reacted with initiatives intended to control costs and increase company performance. As an example. Honeywell's Aerospace Division responded to an extended slowdown in the aerospace industry by laying off employees in 2015 and 2016. The division also implemented weeklong furloughs (unpaid time off) for employees not involved in manufacturing and sales.

Honeywell also believes that improvements in company performance require teamwork, idea sharing and faster decision making, and that this is best accomplished through face-to-face interaction among employees. To facilitate this, the company decided to end its telecommuting option for employees not involved in sales or field service. Honeywell had permitted employees to work remotely, at home if they wished, for several reasons. First, Honeywell employees are based in more than a thousand sites in over 70 countries, and they often work on important projects with other employees who may be located half-way across the world. The projects may be engaging, but trying to coordinate across time zone can be quite difficult during normal working hours. Second, telecommuting allows employees to work when and where they feel they are the most productive. Employees who work remotely can choose to avoid the daily commute, office politics and distractions, and the hassle of accomplishing nonwork demands. Finally, telecommuting is very popular with millennial engineers and scientists who are comfortable using technology to collaborate and who have other employment options.

The change in Honeywell's long-standing policy will be especially difficult for employees who have built their lives around the flexibility of working remotely. As an example, choices regarding where to live may haunt employees who now face the prospect of commuting back and forth to distant Honeywell offices each day. To some Honeywell employees, however, there may be a bright side to the change in policy. After putting in their 40 hours in the office and commuting each day, employees may not feel as compelled to deal with work-related issues that come up in the evenings or on weekends.

Prompt Questions:

1. In your reading from Communities of Practice (PDF ATTACHED), Wenger discussions the importance of participation. Using the definition he provides, identify and explain an advantage and a disadvantage to Honeywell ending its telecommuting option.
2. In your text, chapter four discusses the substance and role of emotions, specifically referencing the "emotional contagion" factor. How do you think Honeywell's decision to end its telecommuting practice will impact employee's emotional state? customer service? work-life satisfaction? Explicate and defend your answer using material from the course.

Submission Instructions:

- Quality is more important than quantity! Keep it under 700 words. There is no minimum but if you fail to answer the questions well or fully points will be deducted. You are making a case for your position using concepts and materials from class - this is not you opining about an idea you have.
- CITE EVERYTHING!
- Save it only as a .doc or .docx and upload it.

A copy of the rubric is available here: Organizational Case Study Rubric (PDF ATTACHED)

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Rubric for Organizational Case Study Criteria Points Possible Points awarded Completion of requested criteria. Did the student follow the instructions and fully answer each part of the prompt, providing sufficient information to explain the position taken? Is the student's answer comprehensive in nature? Inclusion of course material. Did the student reference or utilize concepts presented in the text to discuss the issue? Does the response demonstrate understanding and application of the course content? Critical thought. Did the student’s answer explore the complexity of organizational life? Does it consider the multitude of possible responses, emotions, and alternative courses of action? Quality of work. Is the assignment error free? Did the student use complete sentences and college level presentation of ideas (e.g. coherent thoughts)? Total 30 25 25 20 100 Chapter I Meaning Our attempts to understand human life open a vast space of relevant questions - from the origin of the universe to the workings of the brain, from the details of every thought to the purpose of life. In this vast space of questions, the concept of practice is useful for addressing a specific slice: a focus on the experience of meaningfulness. Practice is, first and foremost, a process by which we can experience the world and our engagement with it as meaningful. Of course, in order to engage in practice, we must be alive in a world in which we can act and interact. We must have a body with a brain that is functioning well enough to participate in social communities. We must have ways to communicate with one another. But a focus on prac tice is not merely a functional perspective on human activities, even activities involving multiple individuals. It does not address simply the mechanics of getting something done, individually or in groups; it is not a mechanical perspective. It includes not just bodies (or even coor dinated bodies) and not just brains (even coordinated ones}, but more over that which gives meaning to the motions of bodies and the work ings of brains. 1 Let me illustrate this point by analogy to a work of art. There are aJI sorts of mechanics involved in producing a painting: a canvas, bru shes, color pigments, and sophisticated techniques. The image itself is but a thin veneer. Yet in the end, for the painter and for the viewer, it is the painting as an experience of meaning that counts. Similarly, in the pur suit of our enterprises, we engage in all sorts of activities with complex bodies that are the result of millennia of evolution. Still, in the end, oil-. �ings•wc produce that matter. This focus on meaningfulness is therefore not primarily on the tech nicalities of "meaning." It is not on meaning as it sits locked up in dictionaries. It is not just on meaning as a relation between a sign and a reference. But neither is it on meaning as a grand question - on the ...
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Tags: social process communities of practice physical presence social communities process of engagement

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Explanation & Answer

Attached.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL CASE STUDY

Organizational Case Study
Name
Institutional Affiliation

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ORGANIZATIONAL CASE STUDY

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Organizational Case Study
Question 1: In your reading from Communities of Practice (PDF ATTACHED), Wenger
discussions the importance of participation. Using the definition he provides, identify, and
explain an advantage and a disadvantage to Honeywell ending its telecommuting option.

Participation becomes an active process leading to action and, more so, guarantees a sense of
connection. In this case, participation enables various actors to own an activity and foster
synergy to accomplish a given objective or purpose. Wenger (1999) describes involvement as a
social process. The social process he envisages generally details the social experience that human
beings lead a...