A Perfect Response to an Imperfect Storm

Schedule: TTh/10:00-11:30 am
GROUPMATES:
Baluyut, Cris
Jayson
Cunanan, Lovely
Gomez, Paolo
Mendoza,
Beverly
Sibug, Marinella

I. Case Title: A Perfect Response to an Imperfect Storm

II. Time Context
III. View Point:
As researchers, they are indeed excellent they’re strategies, decisions;
performance can’t be questioned and criticized. As a manager, situations like these,
the organizational culture matters a lot.
IV. Statement of the Problem:
How to cope up with inevitable circumstances such as a response to a storm?
V. Areas of Consideration
• Commitment - Total Commitment to the shared success of their employees, customers and
shareholders.
• Freedom -
• Challenge and Involvement – involvement of other state to help the Southern
Company
• Time – the company should regenerate power as much as possible (shortest
period of time)
• Conflict Resolutions -
• Decentralization -
• Outcome Oriented –
• Superior Performance - in all they do - safety first, teamwork, diversity and continuous
improvement.
• Unquestionable Trust - where honest, fairness and integrity drive their corporate behavior. They
keep their promises and ethical behavior is a cornerstone of how they do business.

VI. Alternative Courses of Action

• Centralization(adv: well organized, workers follow the command of
the managers, the decision comes from top – low rank managers,
dis: time consuming)
• Decentralization (adv: the task would be done easily by the workers
because they will not ask for any decisions to make by the managers
, dis: )
• Team oriented (
• Division of Labor (adv: organized, workers work to their
specialization, workers work by group, dis:
• Pre-planning
• excellent execution
• well-defined plan and significant help

VII. Recommendation
a.) Giving incentives and recognition to the employees who worked
hard in Southern Company for the restoration of power.
b.) With this kind of situation, the company should invest/save
money worth of millions so that when it happens again they have money
to use for the reconstruction.
c.)
VIII. Plan of Action
a.) Giving a Family Service programs that would help workers who
suffered personal loss during this time.
b.) Investing money for the securing equipments and logistical
support.
INTRODUCTION ABOUT SOUTHERN COMPANY

Southern Company’s history includes hundreds of success stories and

achievements. Some milestones however stand out as pivotal events in the
company’s growth. Here, listed chronologically, are 10 special “moments that
mattered”.
James Mitchell was an engineer and dreamer. Thomas Martin was an
ambitious lawyer. Beginning in 1911, they scouted a series of sites on Alabama
rivers that were suitable for making electricity, enough to serve not only Alabama
but also Georgia, the eastern half of Mississippi and the panhandle of Florida. They
eventually would sketch a map of an interconnected and integrated electricity grid
that would tie distant communities to sources of low-cost power.
As soon as Southern Company’s pioneer utilities were up and running, they
started looking for ways to help the communities they served. In 1920, Alabama
Power became the first utility in America to create an economic development
department. Later that decade, Georgia Power – under the visionary leadership of
Preston Arkwright – promised its new customers that it would be “a citizen wherever
we serve.”
When the operating companies that comprise Southern Company were
chartered in 1947, they had already survived:
• A hostile takeover in 1929
• The Great Depression, which halted growth in the South
• TVA acquisition of electricity properties
• World War II, which left only skeletal line crews to supply growing military
demand

This formed the core of a resilient and strong company that customers could count
upon.
Don Early knew there had to be a way for an analog computer to reduce the
cost of producing and transmitting electricity. In 1954, his “Early Bird” was the first
computer that could determine which generating unit could produce the next
increment of electricity most economically – data previously calculated manually
with slide rules. The basic principles developed for the “Early Bird” are still used
today.
In the early 1950’s, southern Company began studying the peaceful use of
atomic energy to generate electricity. It nominated its brightest engineers, headed
by Ruble Thomas, to be part of the utility industry’s Enrico Fermi nuclear project in
Detroit. Southern Company decided to build its first nuclear plant in 1967 and later,
enhanced the efficiency and value of nuclear power through Southern Nuclear,
which now operates three plants consistently among the best – run in America.
Hurricane Camille came ashore east of Bay St. Louis Mississippi just before
midnight, Aug. 17, 1967, with 200-mph winds and 24-foot tides. More than
170transmission towers were toppled; electric load dropped from 477 to 70 mega
watts. But Mississippi Power would wage a heroic and relentless effort to restore
power to its community, later recognized with the electric utility industry’s highest
honor – the Edison Award. Today, lessons learned from Camille and later storms
have made Southern Company a master in restoring storm outages.
Sometimes you get more by giving something up than you would by keeping
it. The Georgia Territorial Act of 1973 carved service areas among more than 100
co- ops, municipals and investor - owned utilities. Each was given a defined
territory, but new customers with at least 900 kilowatts could choose their supplier.
Suddenly Georgia was America’s most competitive for winning and keeping
customers led to the high customer satisfaction standards we now carry into the
new century.
The 1973 Arab oil embargo ignited the energy crisis, double digit inflation
and an era of conservation in electricity consumption. Southern Company faced a
serious dilemma: What to do with the capacity built to meet anticipated load growth
of the 1970’s? Southern Company responded with innovative deal-making that
would be known as “unit power sales”. It was America’s first glimpse of long term
wholesale contracts and essentially the foundation of today’s booming U.S.
wholesale electricity market.
On July 10, 1995, Southern Company transformed itself from a regional utility
to a global energy company by buying 11.2 percent of the shares of the British
electric company South Western Electricity. Southern Company was the first U.S.
Company to buy a UK utility, first to buy an Asian energy producer (CEPA), and first
in the European electricity market with a partial interest in the Germany utility,
Bewag.