Sun Microsystems Case Study

Team 3

Federico Boni
Youngmin Kim
Sunny Patel
Nicole Thomas
James’ management of a global team

1. Failure to provide fair compensation and motivation

2. Emergency response contact system failure

3. Absence of leadership
Who is responsible for the HS Holdings crisis?

HS holding banking system went down for 2 hours.

Sun Microsystems was not able to promptly respond to the incident and the following business disruption was
so intense that HS holding is threatening a lawsuit against Sun Microsystems.

● Misinformation: roles assigned wrongly.

● Mismanagement.
● Lack of communication.
● Time difference makes it more difficult.

➢ Every team was trying to prove its own worth and to leave behind the others.
➢ Individualism.
➢ Not equal division of labor.
➢ When you assign a task in a team, one single person is not responsible for the failure ,it is a task of the
whole team.
Role of Open Work Environment

● Reduces real estate holdings by more

the 15%

● Consisted of 3 components
○ Mobility with security
○ Access to workplace on day-to-day
basis
○ Employees worked from home
Role of Diversity
● Culturally Diverse Team resulted in:
○ Differing cultural business norms
○ Different practices based on local markets
○ Unconscious bias’ by James reflected in his interactions with the team

● Lack of awareness of cultural differences lead to the disharmony within the group
○ Compensation differences based on local markets
○ Employee benefit (vacation time) differed based on local markets
○ Concern that James’ lack of understanding of local cultures would impact
performance reviews
○ Perceived bias or favoritism towards the US sub-team
 Short Term and Long Term Solutions
Short term

- Fair reward and motivation (redesign of the benefits and incentives)

- Clarification of roles and responsibilities (including reinforcement of emergency measures)

- Schedule more face time with non-US teams

- Establish communication norms and processes for the team

Long term

- Implementing collaborative leadership (building and maintaining trust)

- Assess the structure of his team and restructure as appropriate
References

Neeley, T., Delong, T. J. (2009). Managing a Global Team: Greg James

at Sun Microsystems, Inc. (A). Harvard Business School.