NewTel Is a Telephone Company with a Policy of Filling

question 82

Essay

NewTel is a telephone company with a policy of filling positions through promotions rather than hiring from outside. Until recently, the company had a strong engineering focus and tended to promote people into senior executive positions from the engineering areas. Consequently, almost all of the company's 14 senior executives joined the company over 20 years ago in junior engineering positions. There is increasing pressure on NewTel to become more marketing and service oriented, so four people were hired one year ago from consumer products and retail firms to fill new senior executive positions in marketing and service management. The external hires were necessary because employees were not sufficiently qualified. Now there are signs of tension among senior executives, particularly during budget deliberations where there is limited discretionary spending on new corporate activities. The four new hires have been frustrated in their attempts to have the company put more money into marketing and customer services instead of technology investment. Explain why conflict has occurred among senior executives at NewTel.

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Definitions:

Internal Rate

Often refers to the internal rate of return (IRR), which is the discount rate that makes the net present value (NPV) of all cash flows from a particular project equal to zero.

Operating Costs

Expenses associated with the day-to-day functioning of a business, such as rent, utilities, and payroll, excluding costs related to production.

Annual Cost

The total expenses associated with maintaining or operating something over the course of a year.

Useful Life

The estimated period over which a fixed asset is expected to be useful to the owning entity, crucial for calculating depreciation.