Case -01

Questions
1. What management skills did jack demonstrate as a marketing manager at
the travel product company? What management skills did he demonstrate
as a VP at the consumer product firm?
2. Should Jack have taken the special assignment offered him by the
consumer products? What kinds of skills was the president of overseas
operations thinking about when he offered the assignment to jack?
3. What management skills would have helped jack avoid the catastrophe
that befell his project at the consumer-electronics firm?

Question-1:

What management skills did Jack demonstrate as a marketing manager at

the travel products company? What management skills did he demonstrate
as
a
VP
at
the
consumer
products
firm?
Answer-1:
At the travel products company, as a marketing manager Jack was able to
demonstrate a few management skills that helped in his success at the
company, will help to achieve the organizational goal. He was able to show
his technical, conceptual, diagnostic, and decision making skills.
Moreover, his ability to plan, organize, and lead, control, communicate also
helped him to come up with a new product. These skills enabled Jack to
effectively hold this position within the company efficiently.
First, he recognized that new products were the best route for the company
and for him personally. He then quickly made the decision to devote his time
and energy to this endeavor.
Then From my point of view, I also feel that he had to use technical skill
because he was heading projects where new products were being created. In
order to lead these projects, he would certainly need some technical
expertise about the items that were being made.
He also had strong conceptual skills, recognizing that the chair his team was
creating would be a major success.
As vice president of a consumer products firm, Jack was able to spot
promising items in the companys new product pipeline. Because of his
ability to monitor and evaluate the products, as well as his technical and
conceptual abilities, Jack quickly gained the attention of upper management
at the company. This time Jack showed a great deal of decision-making skills
that are required at all levels of management.
His ability to recognize that products like the oral-hygiene rinse for dogs
would be a success and how this would benefit the company showed that he
could see the big picture. However, it is required more at the top-level of
management. A manager must be able to make quick and correct decisions.
Jack must also be able to implement his decision wisely.

Question-2:
Should Jack have taken the special assignment offered him by the consumer
products firm? What kinds of skills was the president of overseas operations
thinking about when he offered the assignment to jack?
Answer-2:
From my opinion, I will suggest that Jack should have taken the special
assignment offered to him by the consumer products firm.
Its pretty obvious Jack should have taken the special assignment overseas
because he would have the opportunity for more management experience in
an international setting.
There are some reasons on the basis of which the president of overseas
operations thinking about when they offered the assignment to jack:

The upper management of the company were impressed by Jacks

current management skills and wanted to give him a chance to learn
more from other managers within the company, enabling him to grow
and to become more valuable to the company.
He will learn from all areas of the business, learn more about time
management, planning, inter-personal relations and decision making
skills that he ended up needing in his last job as a divisional president.
This would have been extremely valuable when and if jack became
finally a division president. Instead, he took the job with the consumer
electronics firm, made a bad decision and is facing the prospect of
losing his job.
Moreover, taking the overseas job would have required Jack to work
with managers from every other area of the company. This would
surely have improved his communication and interpersonal skills
The president of overseas operations was obviously intrigued by Jacks
ability to spot successful products and wanted to use Jacks skill to
expand into overseas markets.
Jacks conceptual skill and decision making that was shown in his
previous successes could have possibly led to success in these
overseas markets as well.
These would certainly come in handy as well when he became a
division president.

Question-3:
What management skills would have helped Jack avoid the catastrophe that
befell his project at the consumer electronics firm?
Answer-3:
If Jack had been more effectively handle with the technical details and more
knowledgeable, he may have been able to identify the problem earlier and
take care of the problem.
However, It would have also helped if he had stronger interpersonal and
communication skills because his team hid the glitch from Jack, showing a
lack of communication within his organization. Also, better interpersonal
skills would have probably led Jack to be in better contact with the
production line in Malaysia and he may have been informed of the glitch
much sooner.
Some other skills will help jack to solve the problem as:
Skills
Service Orientation - Actively looking for ways to help people.
Social Perceptiveness - Being aware of others' reactions and
understanding why they react as they do.
Persuasion - Persuading others to change their minds or
behavior.
Judgment and Decision Making - Considering the relative
costs and benefits of potential actions to choose the most
appropriate one.
Coordination - Adjusting actions in relation to others' actions.
Active Learning - Understanding the implications of new
information for both current and future problem-solving and
decision-making.
Monitoring - Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself,
other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or
take corrective action.
Critical Thinking - Using logic and reasoning to identify the

strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions,

conclusions or approaches to problems.
Time Management - Managing one's own time and the time
of others.
Complex Problem Solving - Identifying complex problems and
reviewing related information to develop and evaluate
options and implement solutions.
Negotiation - Bringing others together and trying to reconcile
differences.

Case 02
Questions
1. Which forces Goldman Sashs external environment have accounted most
for the fortunes of fate that the company indeed the investment
banking industry has experienced since 2008?
2. Explain the roles of Goldmans partners, both as owners and employees,
in forming and managing its internal environment.
3. In 2008, citing Goldman is one of the top 20 most admired companies
in the united states, Fortune magazine characterized the firms culture as
an impossible to replicate mix of extreme aggression , deep paranoia
,individual ambition, and robot like teamwork, judging from our case,,
how valid do you regard this characterization? If you were a top manager
at Goldman, how would you deal with the apparent conflict between
individual ambitions an robot like teamwork?

Question-1:
Which forces Goldman Sashs external environment have accounted most for
the fortunes of fate that the company indeed the investment banking
industry has experienced since 2008?
Answer-1:
Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 and is headquartered at 200 West
Street in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City, with additional offices
in international financial centers. The firm provides mergers and acquisitions
advice, underwriting services, asset management, and prime brokerage to its
clients, which include corporations, governments and individuals. The firm
also engages in market making and private equity deals, and is a primary
dealer in the United States Treasury security market.
According to the text book, during 2008, Goldman Sachs faced the under of
the global financial crisis. Because of this global financial crisis, Goldman
Sachs lost ten percent of its workforce or cut more than three thousand of its
coveted jobs. Not only the loss of workforce and coveted jobs, but also the
loss of the stake-holders. Some of the nervous investors sold off their shares.
That caused the stock price of Goldman Sachs fallen about 50 percent from
the highest price which was 247.92 dollars. Under the influence of this
external environment, Goldman Sachs decided to transform itself from an
investment bank into a holding-company bank. Before this transformation,
Goldman has epitomized a high-risk, high-return culture. However, when it
became a holding-company bank, it no longer kept this high-risk, high-return
culture.
The external environment are those factors that occur outside of the
company that cause change inside organizations and are, for the most part,
beyond the control of the company. Customers, competition, the economy,
technology, political and social conditions and resources are common
external factors that influence the organization. Even though the external
environment occurs outside of an organization, it can have a significant
influence on its current operations, growth and long-term sustainability.
Ignoring external forces can be a detrimental mistake for managers to make.
As such, it is imperative that managers continually monitor and adapt to the
external environment, working to make proactive changes earlier on rather
than having to take a reactive approach, which can lead to a vastly different
outcome
The external environment is everything outside an organization's boundaries
that might affect it Included in the external environment that surrounds an

organization, is the economic dimension, which encompasses the overall

health and stability of the economic climate that the company operates in .

In the case of Goldman Sachs, the firm was inevitably touched by the global
financial crisis (following the collapse of the housing bubble in December
2007), and was forced to convert from an investment bank to a holdingcompany bank in 2008 (Griffin, 2013, p. 3-7e). Although executives
attempted damage control, there were factors in play beyond their control,
causing Goldman Sachs company stock price to fall approximately 50% at
the height of the financial collapse.
Actions in the 20072008 mortgage crisis
During the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, Goldman was able to profit from
the collapse in subprime mortgage bonds in the summer of 2007 by shortselling subprime mortgage-backed securities. Two Goldman traders, Michael
Swenson and Josh Birnbaum, are credited with being responsible for the
firm's large profits during the crisis. The pair, members of Goldman's
structured products group in New York, made a profit of $4 billion by
"betting" on a collapse in the sub-prime market, and shorting mortgagerelated securities. By summer 2007, they persuaded colleagues to see their
point of view and convinced skeptical risk management executives. The firm
initially avoided large subprime writedowns, and achieved a net profit due to
significant losses on non-prime securitized loans being offset by gains on
short mortgage positions. The firm's viability was later called into question as
the crisis intensified in September 2008.
On October 15, 2007, as the crisis had begun to unravel, Allan Sloan, a
senior editor for Fortune magazine, said:
So let's reduce this macro story to human scale. Meet GSAMP Trust 2006-S3,
a $494 million drop in the junk-mortgage bucket, part of the more than halfa-trillion dollars of mortgage-backed securities issued last year. We found this
issue by asking mortgage mavens to pick the worst deal they knew of that
had been floated by a top-tier firm and this one's pretty bad.
It was sold by Goldman Sachs GSAMP originally stood for Goldman Sachs
Alternative Mortgage Products but now has become a name itself, like AT&T
and 3M.

This issue, which is backed by ultra-risky second-mortgage loans, contains all

the elements that facilitated the housing bubble and bust. It's got
speculators searching for quick gains in hot housing markets; it's got loans
that seem to have been made with little or no serious analysis by lenders;
and finally, it's got Wall Street, which churned out mortgage "product"
because buyers wanted it. As they say on the Street, "When the ducks
quack, feed them."
On September 21, 2008, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last two
major investment banks in the United States, both confirmed that they would
become traditional bank holding companies, bringing an end to the era of
investment banking on Wall Street. The Federal Reserve's approval of their
bid to become banks ended the ascendancy of the securities firms, 75 years
after Congress separated them from deposit-taking lenders, and capped
weeks of chaos that sent Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy and led to the
rushed sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. to Bank of America Corp.
According to a 2009 BrandAsset Valuator survey taken of 17,000 people
nationwide, the firm's reputation suffered in 2008 and 2009, and rival
Morgan Stanley was respected more than Goldman Sachs, a reversal of the
sentiment in 2006. Goldman refused to comment on the findings.
The forces in Goldman Sachss external environment that accounts most for
the fortunes of fate are the economic dimension, the sociocultural
dimension and the regulators that are part of the task environment. For the
economic dimension is when Goldman Sachs was in time of a global financial
crisis, which made some of the investors at jittery and nervous and so they
begin to sell off their shares until the companys stock price fell in half. After
they transitioned from an investment bank to a holding company bank and
the big external force were the regulators; like the Securities and Exchange
Commission, and the sociocultural dimension. When they transitioned, they
differed from their high-risk, high- return culture because at the time they
needed to respond to the changes of customs and values in their society and
their company, which is the reason why they became a holding-company
bank. They adjust to whatever happens in their environment and is one of
the reasons why Goldman Sachss has been able to survive for so long in the
financial market.

Question-2:
Explain the roles of Goldmans partners, both as owners and employees, in
forming and managing its internal environment.
Answer-2:
The internal environment of an organization refers to events, factors,
people, systems, structures and conditions inside the organization that are
generally under the control of the company. The company's mission
statement, organizational culture and style of leadership are factors typically
associated with the internal environment of an organization. As such, it is the
internal environment that will influence organizational activities, decisions
and employee behavior and attitudes. Changes in the leadership style, the
organization's mission or culture can have a considerable impact on the
organization.
The internal business environment comprises of factors within the company
which impact the success and approach of operations. Unlike the external
environment, the company has control over these factors. It is important to
recognize potential opportunities and threats outside company operations.
However, managing the strengths of internal operations is the key to
business success.
As owners, Goldmans partners helped the company form its internal
environment by investing their own money and handling the companys
assets long term. As owners they also help by leading as example for their
employees by at first showing their values in high-risk high reward and hard
work and then recruiting employees with the same values. This will help

shape the future of the corporate culture by recruiting the certain and
specific employees. Their recruiting process is a very gruesome task but is a
very big part of Goldman Sachss strategy to further shape the companys
internal environment
The role of company leadership is an essential internal factor. Goldmans
leadership style and other management style impact organizational culture.
Often, firms provide a formal structure with its mission and vision
statements.
Some cultural implications which help Goldmans partners, both as owners
and employees, in forming and managing its internal environment result
from leadership approaches are:

Value of employees
The positive or negative nature
Effectiveness of communication level of family-friendliness

Partners Responsibility

Assist in development of technology

Distribute tasks among employees
Respond to client requests
Help execute developmental processes such as, performance manage
ment, diversity, and analytics
Prioritize day to day issues
Partner with colleagues to ensure Stephany Fernandez

The strength of employees is also an essential internal business factor.

Check if employees are motivated, hard-working and talented. They will
produce better results compared to an unmotivated and less talented
workforce. The processes and relationships between and within departments
can also improve effectiveness and efficiency.
Employees Responsibility

Specialist Roles
Participate in projects to:
o design new system changes,
o improve current work processes,
o increase controls
o reduce cost
Advanced Specialist

Qustion-3:
In 2008, citing Goldman is one of the top 20 most admired companies in
the united states, Fortune magazine characterized the firms culture as an
impossible to replicate mix of extreme aggression , deep paranoia ,individual
ambition, and robot like teamwork, judging from our case,, how valid do you
regard this characterization? If you were a top manager at Goldman, how
would you deal with the apparent conflict between individual ambitions an
robot like teamwork?
Answer-3:
In my opinion, Fortune magazine paid Goldman Sachs an impressive
compliment with its characterization of the financial institutions strategy.
This statement coincides with Lisa Endlichs quote about the companys
internal culture, as she stated: You have to win every head-to-head contest
with everybody else in the company who wants what you want, butand
here's one of those troublesome contradictionsnothing will derail you
faster than not being a team player (Endlich qtd in Griffin, 2013, p. 3-7e).
In my view, a person can have their own personal goals and ambitions, yet
those objectives can align with the organizations team-oriented culture if
managers apply effective motivational strategies.