Alpha / Omega Case Study
The case study illustrates two companies, Acme and Omega electronics that are looking
forward to get a contract through bidding, for manufacturing memory units for a new
photocopying machine produced by one of the major photocopy manufacturers. Omega
surpasses Acme in building a reliable memory unit. Acme in spite of being late and
unreliable as compared to Omega, both companies receive half the order. Acme capitalises
this opportunity by further experimenting and reduces its costs, because of which Acme is
able to o er a price reduction of 20% and as a result gets the contract.
Using the Mechanistic and Organic structure arguments from Chapter 4 the management
styles of Acme and Omega can be compared and contrasted as follows:
Omega uses organic structure as the president – Jim Rawls feels the company is small where
people from di erent functions can coordinate and solve problems. He feels there is no
need for an organizational chart and encourages decentralized approach. One of the major
drawbacks is the efficiency is compromised.
Acme uses mechanistic structure, the president of the company – John Tyler believes in
centralised management style and communication is always top down. Any transfer of
information between functional managers happens through John and he controls what
information to be relayed. He strongly believes in e)ciency and thinks that this structure
