Al Fiorini, the manager of a small, but reasonably successful, mortgage lending company in Atlanta hired managers to run his business while he went back to school, for his executive MBA, in California. He did his best to monitor the company's operations while 2,500 miles away. But the managers not only stole from Al, they stole his entire business! The case forces students to analyze the problems Al faced, to identify the controls that he had in place, and to suggest things he might have done to ensure that these problems would not have occurred.
Questions
- Identify the devices (controls) that Al Fiorini used to control his business both before and after he went back to school. Classify each control as a results, action, or personnel/cultural type of control.
- What went wrong? Did Al use the wrong types of controls? Did he use the right types of controls but fail to design or implement them properly? Or was he just unlucky?
- What should Al do now? Why?