Case Answers

Name

Affiliation

Organizational problems that Anne Mulcahy faced in trying to increase Xerox’s efficiency

and effectiveness

Mulcay was faced by with high level of aggressive competitions. In the early 2000s, there

were many well-known copier companies that had dictated the market. The competitors sold

their products at low price and this made them to be dominant competitors. Xerox did not have

digital copying machines which made it impossible to expand due to low produce and high cost

of production. Xerox was operating at very high operating cost which lead to wastages of billions

of dollars (Schulze, 2011). She was faced with a challenge of deciding on which area of

production to start to innovate the remaining dollars, and develop new digital copiers that could

help to win back customers and maintain their loyalty. Mulcay did not have skilled workforce.

The company had failed to recruit worker with acceptable skills. The employees in place lacked

the performance indicators which could help the company to maintain efficient and effective

uses of the available raw materials. Mulcay being a woman was another challenge because the

male counterpart take them as inferior being. Xerox had an increasing number of female

workforce and for these reason the male had a feeling of intimation. Mulcay has a challenge to

ensure that assertive actions were created and redefining the company culture to ensure that

discrimination will not be acceptable (McGrath, 2010).

Changes that Anne Mulcahy made to structure Xerox’s organizational

Mulcahy’s decided to come with a strategy that ensured most of R&D budget to

develop two different kinds of digital copiers. These were to transform the company products to

gain a high quality brands. These machines was to be used by both middle and large business

line to ensure that the products offered were of high quality, produced faster and price friendly to

be able to stand the competitive advantages I the market. She secondly decided to set more

resources to develop new network that enabled high sales and services offering to improve their

customer’s services. Anne Mulcahy later made a decision of remove certain Xerox’s level

management hierarchy where he maintain a reduction 26% of total corporate overhead. She

come with retrenching strategies those employees who were proactive. The number of

employees was reduced from 95,000 to 55,000 to reduce the total operation cost of the company.

Mulcahy decided to work hand in hand with her manager where they decided to come up with

plans and strategy to save the company (Schulze, 2011). They decided to collaborate and

working together with the other employees to help improving level of production and service

delivery. This motivated the employees to work extra hard because they filed recognized. This

steps helps the company to grow in terms of revenues and profits.

Ways in which Mulcahy’s attempted to redesign and change Xerox have worked to date.

Mulcahy developed strategies that attempted to work closely with the final consumers

of the products and services. Customers are the boss to any business and therefore any farm that

is aiming to grow and develop it should put into account all the customers’ needs and desire.

Mulcahy changed the managements hierarchy are removed those parts that were related and less

effectives. A well described legitimate power should be put into consideration and try to avoid

placing unnecessary level of command. She introduced new digital hardware and software

copying machines which promoted productions and increased sales (Chesbrough, 2010). Any

business that want to achieve development should adopt to new technologies and innovation. She

helped replicate Xerox’s customer base and sales which that were contributed by increased

customized services.

References

Chesbrough, H. (2010). Business model innovation: opportunities and barriers. Long range

planning, 43(2), 354-363.

McGrath, R. G. (2010). Business models: a discovery driven approach. Long range planning,

43(2), 247-261.

Schulze, B. M. (2011). U.S. Patent No. 6,167,369. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark

Office.