31 Oct nonsectarian,
Christian Children’s Fund, Inc. (CCF), established in 1938, is an international, nonsectarian, nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting children. With program offices around the world, it provides health and educational assistance to more than 4.6 million children and families through over 1,000 projects in 30 countries, including the United States. CCF’s programs promote long-term development designed to help break the cycle of poverty by improved access to health care, safe water, immunizations, better nutrition, educational assistance, literacy courses, skills training, and other services specific to improving children’s welfare.
Most of CCF’s revenues come from individual donors who are linked with a specific child. About 75 percent of the sponsors are in the United States, and in 2003, CCF had total revenues of about $143 million. (See Exhibit 1.)
In 1995, CCF began developing an evaluation system, nicknamed AIMES (Annual Impact Monitoring and Evaluation System), to assess the performance of its programs and whether they are making a positive, measurable difference in children’s lives. A working group of national directors, program managers, CCF finance and audit managers, and outside consultants developed a series of metrics that allowed CCF to be more accountable to its sponsors, as well as an evaluation tool to continually assess the impact of its programs on children. The working group wanted metrics that (1) captured critical success factors for CCF’s projects; (2) focused on a program’s impact, not its activities; (3) measured the program’s impact on children; and (4) could be measured and tracked.
The following indicators were chosen:
Under 5-year-old mortality rate
Under 5-year-old moderate and severe malnutrition rate
Adult literacy
One-to-two-year-old immunizations
Tetanus vaccine-protected live births
Families that correctly know how to manage a case of diarrhea
Families that correctly know how to manage acute respiratory infection
Families that have access to safe water
Families that practice safe sanitation
Children enrolled in a formal or informal educational program
Each family in a community with a CCF program is given a family card that tracks each of the preceding 10 indicators for that family. In 1997, the first year of implementation, AIMES captured the health status of about 1.9 million children in approximately 850 projects in 18 countries. Annual visits by project staff or volunteers update each family’s card. The family cards are aggregated at the community level, national level, and then in total for CCF, and provide a reporting system. CCF managers then track trends and compare performance at the community, national, and organizational levels.
It took CCF two years to develop these metrics, test them, and train the staff in all the national offices in how to use the system. AIMES does not prescribe the strategy each community should adopt but rather allows each community to design programs that promote the well-being of children in that community. Program directors can use the AIMES data as a tool to monitor and manage their programs. If child mortality is high, local program directors decide how best to reduce the rate. The 10 AIMES metrics have made project managers more focused and better able to concentrate resources in those areas that make a measurable difference in children’s health. CCF uses the information to make program and resource allocation decisions at the community level. The family card has promoted better nutrition via appropriate feeding and child care practices because there is now more direct contact between CCF staff and volunteers and families.
Required:
Minimum 450 words .You are required to have at least 3 references from a creditable source. Make sure your discussion is in APA format. Your references need to be in APA format. Using this chapter’s organizational architecture framework, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of CCF’s AIMES project.
Case Study: Woodhaven Service
Case Study: Woodhaven Service
Background
Woodhaven Service is a small, independent gas station located in the Woodhaven section of Queens. The station has three gasoline pumps and two service bays. The repair facility specializes in automotive maintenance (oil changes, tune-ups, etc.) and minor repairs (mufflers, shock absorbers, etc.). Woodhaven generally refers customers who require major work, such as transmission rebuilds and electronics, to shops that are better equipped to handle such repairs. Major repairs are done in-house only when both the customer and mechanic agree that this is the best course of action.
During the 20 years that he has owned Woodhaven Service, Harold Mateen’s competence and fairness have built a loyal customer base of neighborhood residents. In fact, demand for his services has been more than he can reasonably meet, yet the repair end of his business is not especially profitable. Most of his competitors earn the lion’s share of their profits through repairs, but Harold is making almost all of his money by selling gasoline. If he could make more money on repairs, Woodhaven would be the most successful service station in the area. Harold believes that Woodhaven’s weakness in repair profitability is due to the inefficiency of his mechanics, who are paid the industry average of $500 per week. While Harold does not think he overpays them, he feels he is not getting his money’s worth.
Harold’s son, Andrew, is a student at the university, where he has learned the Socratic dictum, “To know the Good is to do the Good.” Andrew provided his father with a classic text on employee morality, Dr. Weisbrotten’s Work Hard and Follow the Righteous Way. Every morning for two months, Harold, Andrew, and the mechanics devoted one hour to studying this text. Despite many lively and fascinating discussions on the rights and responsibilities of the employee, productivity did not improve one bit. Harold figured he would just have to go out and hire harder-working mechanics.
The failure of the Weisbrotten method did not surprise Lisa, Harold’s daughter. She knew that Andrew’s methods were bunk. As anyone serious about business knows, the true science of productivity and management of human resources resides in Professor von Drekken’s masterful Modifying Organizational Behavior through Employee Commitment. Yes, employee commitment was the answer to everything! Harold followed the scientific methods to the letter. Yet, despite giving out gold stars, blowing up balloons, and wearing a smiley face button, he found Lisa’s approach no more successful than Andrew’s.
Compensation Plans
Harold thinks that his neighbor Jack Myers, owner of Honest Jack’s Pre-Enjoyed Autorama, might be helpful. After all, one does not become as successful as Jack without a lot of practical knowledge. Or maybe it is Jack’s great radio jingle that does it. Jack tells Harold,
It’s not the jingle, you idiot! It’s the way I pay my guys. Your mechanics make $500 a week no matter what. Why should they put out for you? Because of those stupid buttons? My guys—my guys get paid straight commission and nothing more. They do good by me and I do good by them. Otherwise, let ’em starve.
Look, it’s real simple. Pay ’em a percent of the sales for the work they do. If you need to be a nice guy about it, make that percent so that if sales are average, then they make their usual $500. But if sales are better, they get that percent extra. This way they don’t get hurt but got real reason to help you out.
This hurt Harold. He really liked those buttons. Still, Jack did have a point. Straight commission, however, seemed a little radical. What if sales were bad for a week? That would hurt the mechanics.
Harold figured that it would be better to pay each mechanic a guaranteed $300 a week plus a commission rate that would, given an average volume of business, pay them the extra $200 that would bring their wage back to $500. Under this system, the mechanics would be insulated from a bad week, would not be penalized for an average week, and would still have the incentive to attempt to improve sales. Yes, this seemed more fair.
On the other hand, maybe Jack knows only about the used car business, not about business in general. Harold figured that he should look for an incentive pay method more in line with the way things are done in the auto repair business. Perhaps he should pay his mechanics as he is paid by his customers—by the job. It is standard practice for service stations to charge customers a flat rate for the labor associated with any job. The number of labor hours for which the customer is charged is generally taken from a manual that outlines expected labor times for specific jobs on specific vehicles. The customer pays for these expected hours regardless of how many actual labor hours are expended on the job. Many shops also pay their mechanics by the job. Harold thinks that this approach makes sense because it links the mechanic’s pay to the labor charges paid by the customer.
Required:
| a. | This case presents some popular approaches to alleviating agency costs. Although certain aspects of each of these methods are consistent with the views presented in the text, none of these methods is likely to succeed. Discuss the similarities and differences between the ideas of the chapter and
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| b. | Discuss the expected general effect on agency costs at Woodhaven Service of the new incentive compensation plans. How might they help Woodhaven? Assuming that Harold wants his business to be successful for a long time to come, what major divergent behaviors would be expected under the new compensation proposals? How damaging would you expect these new behaviors to be to a business such as Woodhaven Service? Also, present a defense of the following propositions:
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| c. | Suppose Harold owned a large auto repair franchise located in a department store in a popular suburban shopping mall. Suppose also that this department store is a heavily promoted, well-known national chain that is famous for its good values and easy credit. How should Harold’s thinking on incentive compensation change? What if Harold did not own the franchise but was only the manager of a company-owned outlet? | ||||
| d. | In this problem, it is assumed that knowledge and decision rights are linked. The mechanic who services the car decides what services are warranted. Discuss the costs and benefits of this fact for Woodhaven Service and the independently owned chain-store repair shop. | ||||
| e. | Suppose that Woodhaven’s problems are not due to agency costs. Briefly describe a likely problem that is apparent from the background description in this problem. |
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