business BRIEF-CASE STUDY

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Zara: Senior Production Manager

Zara examined the latest production figures. It was three years since she had joined Omega Engineering Ltd,
a large-scale organisation with production facilities in three Australian capital cities as well as in six overseas
countries. As Senior Production Manager, she was responsible for the efficient operation of both the domestic
and South-East Asian factories.
The weekly production statistics were one important tool she used to evaluate the business’s performance.
When the figures revealed a problem she was able to decide upon an appropriate course of action. Zara prided
herself on having a wide overview of the company and the numerous production schedules and operations that
she had implemented. She was a most competent planner and organiser.
On joining the company, Zara began implementing two management strategies to improve the company’s
production performance — work teams and Total Quality Management. She was a great believer in establishing
work teams, with each team having responsibility for setting specific production goals. It had taken her eighteen
months to prepare the organisation for such a change in the workplace culture, but now the results were starting
to be seen in the improved productivity figures.
After some initial teething problems, the teams were prepared to take on more responsibility and starting
to become involved in long-term planning decisions. After suggestions from individual team members, Zara
encouraged the teams to adopt responsibility for quality control as well as production. She was able to encourage,
motivate and direct team members. In this sense Zara was adopting the characteristics of a leader.
Zara was well respected by the line managers who were responsible to her as well as team leaders and other
senior managers. One of her greatest strengths was her ability to manage change. Instead of seeing change as
a difficulty to overcome or a problem to avoid, Zara had the ability to manage change effectively. In this sense
she was proactive. She was a passionate believer in the principle that all employees needed to understand the
reasons for change. At all times she attempted to provide visionary leadership — a shared vision as to where
the organisation was heading. By communicating this, she believed that employees would more readily ‘own’
the change rather than resist it. She based her ideas on some contemporary management theories: systems
management and contingency theories. She was first introduced to these management theories at a conference.
Zara knew it was unlikely that one management theory would contain all the answers so she developed her
own strategies based on a number of ideas. The one thing she wanted to avoid was being seen as a manager
who could no longer effectively manage. Therefore, she read widely and attended a number of management
workshops to keep up with the latest research and always challenged her own ideas to evaluate their relevance to
the present situation. If the latest production statistics were any indication of her ability to manage, then Zara was
indeed a very competent manager. (UNIT 3: CORPORATE MANAGEMENT: GENERAL INTRODUCTION)
1. What two management strategies did Zara implement to improve the company’s production performance?
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2. Identify the responsibilities each work team adopted.
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3. What is meant by the term ‘visionary leadership’?
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4. Name the contemporary management theories Zara based her ideas on.
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5. Extension Question: List five specific things that Zara does which make her an effective manager.
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 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2002