Difficult Transitions

Tony Stark had just finished his first week at Reece Enterprises and decided to drive
upstate to a small lakefront lodge for some fishing and relaxation. Tony had worked for
the previous ten years for the O’Grady Company, but O’Grady had been through some
hard times of late and had recently shut down several of its operating groups, including
Tony’s, to cut costs. Fortunately, Tony’s experience and recommendations had made
finding another position fairly easy. As he drove the interstate, he reflected on the past
ten years and the apparent situation at Reece.

At O’Grady, things had been great. Tony had been part of the team from day one. The
job had met his personal goals and expectations perfectly, and Tony believed he had
grown greatly as a person. His work was appreciated and recognized; he had received
three promotions and many more pay increases.

Tony had also liked the company itself. The firm was decentralized, allowing its
managers considerable autonomy and freedom. The corporate Culture was easygoing.
Communication was open. It seemed that everyone knew what was going on at all
times, and if you didn’t know about something, it was easy to find out.

The people had been another plus. Tony and three other managers went to lunch often
and played golf every Saturday. They got along well both personally and professionally
and truly worked together as a team. Their boss had been very supportive, giving them
the help they needed but also staying out of the way and letting them work.

When word about the shutdown came down, Tony was devastated. He was sure that
nothing could replace O’Grady. After the final closing was announced, he spent only a
few weeks looking around before he found a comparable position at Reece Enterprises.

As Tony drove, he reflected that "comparable" probably was the wrong word. Indeed,
Reece and O’Grady were about as different as you could get. Top managers at Reece
apparently didn’t worry too much about who did a good job and who didn’t. They
seemed to promote and reward people based on how long they had been there and
how well they played the never-ending political games.

Maybe this stemmed from the organization itself, Tony pondered. Reece was a bigger
organization than O’Grady and was structured much more bureaucratically. It seemed
that no one was allowed to make any sort of decision without getting three signatures
from higher up. Those signatures, though, were hard to get. All the top managers
usually were too busy to see anyone, and interoffice memos apparently had very low
priority.

Tony also had had some problems fitting in. His peers treated him with polite
indifference. He sensed that a couple of them resented that he, an outsider, had been
brought right in at their level after they had had to work themselves up the ladder. On
Tuesday he had asked two colleagues about playing golf. They had politely declined,
saying that they did not play often. But later in the week, he had overheard them making
arrangements to play that very Saturday.

It was at that point that Tony had decided to go fishing. As he steered his car off the
interstate to get gas, he wondered if perhaps he had made a mistake in accepting the
Reece offer without finding out more about what he was getting into.

Case Questions

1. Identify several concepts and characteristics from the field of organizational

2. What advice can you give Tony? How would this advice be supported or
tempered by behavioral concepts and processes?

3. Is it possible to find an "ideal" place to work? Explain.

Helen Bowers was stumped. Sitting in her office at the plant, she pondered the same
questions she had been facing for months: how to get her company’s employees to
work harder and produce more. No matter what she did, it didn’t seem to help much.

Helen had inherited the business three years ago when her father, Jake Bowers,
passed away unexpectedly. Bowers Machine Parts was founded four decades ago by
Jake and had grown into a moderate-size corporation. Bowers makes replacement
parts for large-scale manufacturing machines such as lathes and mills. The firm is
headquartered in Kansas City and has three plants scattered throughout Missouri.

Although Helen grew up in the family business, she never understood her father’s
approach. Jake had treated his employees like part of his family. In Helen’s view,
however, he paid them more than he had to, asked their advice far more often than he
should have, and spent too much time listening to their ideas and complaints. When
Helen took over, she vowed to change how things were done. In particular, she
resolved to stop handling employees with kid gloves and to treat them like what they
were: the hired help.

In addition to changing the way employees were treated, Helen had another goal for
Bowers. She wanted to meet the challenge of international competition. Japanese firms
had moved aggressively into the market for heavy industrial equipment. She saw this as
both a threat and an opportunity. On the one hand, if she could get a toehold as a parts
supplier to these firms, Bowers could grow rapidly. On the other, the lucrative parts
market was also sure to attract more Japanese competitors. Helen had to make sure
that Bowers could compete effectively with highly productive and profitable Japanese
firms.

From the day Helen took over, she practiced an altogether different philosophy to
achieve her goals. For one thing, she increased production quotas by 20 percent. She
instructed her first-line supervisors to crack down on employees and eliminate all idle
time. She also decided to shut down the company softball field her father had built. She
thought the employees really didn’t use it much, and she wanted the space for future
expansion.

Helen also announced that future contributions to the firm’s profit-sharing plan would be
phased out. Employees were paid enough, she believed, and all profits were the rightful
property of the owner—her. She also had private plans to cut future pay increases to
bring average wages down to where she thought they belonged. Finally, Helen changed
a number of operational procedures. In particular, she stopped asking other people for
their advice. She reasoned that she was the boss and knew what was best. If she asked
for advice and then didn’t take it, it would only stir up resentment.
All in all, Helen thought, things should be going much better. Output should be up and
costs should be way down. Her strategy should be resulting in much higher levels of
productivity and profits.

But that was not happening. Whenever Helen walked through one of the plants, she
sensed that people weren’t doing their best. Performance reports indicated that output
was only marginally higher than before but scrap rates had soared. Payroll costs were
indeed lower, but other personnel costs were up. It seemed that turnover had increased
substantially and training costs had gone up as a result.

In desperation, Helen finally had hired a consultant. After carefully researching the
history of the organization and Helen’s recent changes, the consultant made some
remarkable suggestions. The bottom line, Helen felt, was that the consultant thought
she should go back to that "humanistic nonsense" her father had used. No matter how
she turned it, though, she just couldn’t see the wisdom in this. People worked to make a
buck and didn’t want all that participation stuff.

Suddenly, Helen knew just what to do: She would announce that all employees who
failed to increase their productivity by 10 percent would suffer an equal pay cut. She
sighed in relief, feeling confident that she had finally figured out the answer.

Case Questions

1. How successful do you think Helen Bowers’s new plan will be?

2. What challenges does Helen confront?

3. If you were Helen’s consultant, what would you advise her to do?
Culture Shock

Warren Oats was a highly successful executive for American Auto Suppliers, a
Chicago-based company that makes original-equipment specialty parts for Ford, GM,
and Chrysler. Rather than retreat before the onslaught of Japanese automakers, AAS
decided to counterattack and use its reputation for quality and dependability to win over
customers in Japan. Oats had started in the company as an engineer and worked his
way up to become one of a handful of senior managers who had a shot at the next open
vice-presidential position. He knew he needed to distinguish himself somehow, so when
he was given a chance to lead the AAS attack on the Japanese market, he jumped at it.

Oats knew he did not have time to learn Japanese, but he had heard that many
Japanese executives speak English, and the company would hire a translator anyway.
The toughest part about leaving the United States was persuading his wife, Carol, to
take an eighteen-month leave from her career as an attorney with a prestigious Chicago
law firm. Carol finally persuaded herself that she did not want to miss an opportunity to
learn a new culture. So, armed with all the information they could gather about Japan
from their local library, the Oats headed for Tokyo.

Known as an energetic, aggressive salesperson back home, Warren Oats wasted little
time getting started. As soon as his office had a telephone—and well before all his files
had arrived from the States—Oats made an appointment to meet with executives of one
of Japan’s leading automakers. Oats reasoned that if he was going to overcome the
famous Japanese resistance to foreign companies, he should get started as soon as
possible.

Oats felt very uncomfortable at that first meeting. He got the feeling that the Japanese
executives were waiting for something. It seemed that everyone but Oats was in slow
motion. The Japanese did not speak English well and appeared grateful for the
presence of the interpreter, but even the interpreter seemed to take her time in
translating each phrase. Frustrated by this seeming lethargy and beginning to doubt the
much-touted Japanese efficiency, Oats got right to the point. He made an oral
presentation of his proposal, waiting patiently for the translation of each sentence. Then
he handed the leader of the Japanese delegation a packet containing the specifics of
his proposal, got up, and left. The translator trailed behind him as if wanting to drag out
the process even further.

By the end of their first week, both Oats and his wife were frustrated. Oats’s office
phone had not rung once, which did not make him optimistic about his meeting with
another top company the following week. Carol could scarcely contain her irritation with
what she had perceived of the Japanese way of life. She had been sure that a well-
respected U.S. lawyer would have little trouble securing a job with a Japanese
multinational corporation, but the executives she had met with seemed insulted that she
was asking them for a job. And the way they treated their secretaries! After only a week
in Japan, both Carol and Warren Oats were ready to go home.
A month later, their perspective had changed radically, and both looked back on those
first meetings with embarrassment. Within that month, they had learned a lot about the
Japanese sense of protocol and attitudes toward women. Warren Oats believed he was
beginning to get the knack of doing business with the Japanese in their manner:
establishing a relationship slowly, almost ritualistically, waiting through a number of
meetings before bringing up the real business at hand, and then doing so circumspectly.
It was difficult for Oats to slow his pace, and it made him nervous to be so indirect, but
he was beginning to see some value in the sometimes humbling learning process he
was going through. Perhaps, he thought, he and Carol could become consultants for
other executives who needed to learn the lessons he was beginning to understand.

Case Questions

1. What specific errors did Warren and Carol Oats make during their first week in
Japan?

2. If you were talking to a non-U.S. businessperson making a first contact with an

Susan Harrington continued to drum her fingers on her desk. She had a real problem
and wasn’t sure what to do next. She had a lot of confidence in Jack Reed, but she
suspected she was about the last person in the office who did. Perhaps if she ran
through the entire story again in her mind she would see the solution.

Susan had been distribution manager for Clarkston Industries for almost twenty years.
An early brush with the law and a short stay in prison had made her realize the
importance of honesty and hard work. Henry Clarkston had given her a chance despite
her record, and Susan had made the most of it. She now was one of the most respected
managers in the company. Few people knew her background.

Susan had hired Jack Reed fresh out of prison six months ago. Susan understood how
Jack felt when Jack tried to explain his past and asked for another chance. Susan
decided to give him that chance just as Henry Clarkston had given her one. Jack
eagerly accepted a job on the loading docks and could soon load a truck as fast as
anyone in the crew.

Things had gone well at first. Everyone seemed to like Jack, and he made several new
friends. Susan had been vaguely disturbed about two months ago, however, when
another dock worker reported his wallet missing. She confronted Jack about this and
was reassured when Jack understood her concern and earnestly but calmly asserted
his innocence. Susan was especially relieved when the wallet was found a few days
later.

The events of last week, however, had caused serious trouble. First, a new personnel
clerk had come across records about Jack’s past while updating employee files.
Assuming that the information was common knowledge, the clerk had mentioned to
several employees what a good thing it was to give ex-convicts like Jack a chance. The
next day, someone in bookkeeping discovered some money missing from petty cash.
Another worker claimed to have seen Jack in the area around the office strongbox,
which was open during working hours, earlier that same day.

Most people assumed Jack was the thief. Even the worker whose wallet had been
misplaced suggested that perhaps Jack had indeed stolen it but had returned it when
questioned. Several employees had approached Susan and requested that Jack be
fired. Meanwhile, when Susan had discussed the problem with Jack, Jack had been
defensive and sullen and said little about the petty-cash situation other than to deny
stealing the money.

To her dismay, Susan found that rethinking the story did little to solve his problem.
Should she fire Jack? The evidence, of course, was purely circumstantial, yet
everybody else seemed to see things quite clearly. Susan feared that if she did not fire
Jack, she would lose everyone’s trust and that some people might even begin to
question her own motives.

Case Questions

1. Explain the events in this case in terms of perception and attitudes. Does
personality play a role?

2. What should Susan do? Should she fire Jack or give him another chance?
More Than a Paycheck

Lemuel Greene was a trainer for National Home Manufacturers, a large builder of
prefabricated homes. National Home had hired Greene fresh from graduate school with
a master’s degree in English. At first, the company put him to work writing and revising
company brochures and helping with the most important correspondence at the senior
level. But soon, both Greene and senior management officials began to notice how well
he worked with executives on their writing, how he made them feel more confident
about it, and how, after working with an executive on a report, the executive often was
much more eager to take on the next writing task.

So National Home moved Greene into its prestigious training department. The
company’s trainers worked with thousands of supervisors, managers, and executives,
helping them learn everything from new computer languages to time management skills
to how to get the most out of the workers on the plant floor, many of whom were
unmotivated high school dropouts. Soon Greene was spending all his time giving short
seminars on executive writing as well as coaching his students to perfect their memos
and letters.

Greene’s move into training meant a big increase in salary, and when he started
working exclusively with the company’s top brass, it seemed as though he got a bonus
every month. Greene’s supervisor, Mirela Albert, knew he was making more than many
executives who had been with the company three times as long, and probably twice as
much as any of his graduate school classmates who concentrated in English. Yet in her
biweekly meetings with him, she could tell that Greene wasn’t happy.

When Albert asked him about it, Greene replied that he was in a bit of a rut. He had to
keep saying the same things over and over in his seminars, and business memos
weren’t as interesting as the literature he had been trained on. But then, after trailing off
for a moment, he blurted out, "They don’t need me!" Since the memos filtering down
through the company were now flawlessly polished, and the annual report was 20
percent shorter but said everything it needed to, Greene’s desire to be needed was not
fulfilled.

The next week, Greene came to Albert with a proposal: What if he started holding
classes for some of the floor workers, many of whom had no future within or outside the
company because many could write nothing but their own names? Albert took the idea
to her superiors. They told her that they wouldn’t oppose it, but Greene couldn’t possibly
keep drawing such a high salary if he worked with people whose contribution to the
company was compensated at minimum wage.

Greene agreed to a reduced salary and began offering English classes on the factory
floor, which were billed by management (who hoped to avoid a wage hike that year) as
an added benefit of the job. At first only two or three workers showed up—and they,
Greene believed, only wanted an excuse to get away from the nailing guns for awhile.
But gradually word got around that Greene was serious about what he was doing and
didn’t treat the workers like kids in a remedial class.

At the end of the year, Greene got a bonus from a new source: the vice president in
charge of production. Although Greene’s course took workers off the job for a couple of
hours a week, productivity had actually improved since his course began, employee
turnover had dropped, and for the first time in over a year, some of the floor workers
had begun to apply for supervisory positions. Greene was pleased with the bonus, but
when Albert saw him grinning as he walked around the building, she knew he wasn’t
thinking about his bank account.

Case Questions

1. What need theories would explain why Lemuel Greene was unhappy despite his
high income?

2. Greene seems to have drifted into being a teacher. Given his needs and
motivations, do you think teaching is an appropriate profession for him?
Equity in Academia

When the last student left Melinda Wilkerson’s office at 5:30 p.m., the young English
Professor just sat, too exhausted to move. Her desk was piled high with student papers,
journals, and recommendation forms. "There goes my weekend," she thought to herself,
knowing that just reading and commenting on the thirty journals would take up all of
Saturday. She liked reading the journals, getting a glimpse of how her students were
reacting to the novels and poems she had them read, watching them grow and change.
But recently, as she picked up another journal from the bottomless pile or greeted
another student with a smile, she often wondered whether it was all worth it.

Wilkerson had had such a moment about an hour earlier, when Ron Agua, whose office
was across the hall, had waved to her as he walked past her door. "I’m off to the Rat,"
he announced. "Come join us if you ever get free." For a moment Wilkerson had stared
blankly at the student before her, pondering the scene at the Rathskeller, the
university’s most popular restaurant and meeting place. Agua would be there with four
or five of the department’s senior members, including Alice Bordy, the department chair.
All would be glad to have her join them . . . if only she didn’t have so much work.

At the start of her first year as an assistant professor, Wilkerson had accepted her
overwhelming workload as part of the territory. Her paycheck was smaller and her hours
longer than she had expected, but Agua and the other two new faculty members
seemed to be suffering under the same burdens.

But now, in her second semester, Wilkerson was beginning to feel that things weren’t
right. The stream of students knocking on her door persisted, but she noticed that Agua
was spending less time talking and more time at his word processor than he had during
the first semester. When asked, Agua told her he had reduced his course load because
of his extra work on the department’s hiring and library committees. He seemed
surprised when Wilkerson admitted that she didn’t know there was such a thing as a
course reduction.

As the semester progressed, Wilkerson realized there was a lot she didn’t know about
the way the department functioned. Agua would disappear once a week or so to give
talks to groups around the state and then would turn those talks into papers for
scholarly journals—something Wilkerson couldn’t dream of having time to do. She and
Agua were still good friends, but she began to see differences in their approaches. "I cut
down my office hours this semester," he told her one day. "With all those students
around all the time, I just never had a chance to get my work done."

Wilkerson had pondered that statement for a few weeks. She thought that dealing with
students was "getting work done." But when salaries for the following year were
announced, she realized what Agua meant. He would be making almost $1,000 more
than she; the human resources committee viewed his committee work as a valuable
asset to the department, his talks around the state had already earned him notoriety,
and his three upcoming publications clearly put him ahead of the other first-year
professors.

Wilkerson was confused. Agua hadn’t done anything sneaky or immoral—in fact,
everything he did was admirable, things she would have liked to do. His trips to the Rat
gave him the inside scoop on what to do and whom to talk to, but she couldn’t blame
him for that either. She could have done exactly the same thing. They worked equally
hard, she thought. Yet Agua already was the highly paid star, whereas she was just
another overworked instructor.

As she began piling all the books, papers, and journals into her bag, Wilkerson thought
about what she could do. She could quit and go somewhere else where she might be
more appreciated, but jobs were hard to find and she suspected that the same thing
might happen there. She could charge sex discrimination and demand to be paid as
much as Agua, but that would be unfair to him and she didn’t really feel discriminated
against for being a woman. The university simply didn’t value what she did with her time
as highly as it valued what Agua did with his.

Putting on her coat, Wilkerson spotted a piece of paper that had dropped out of one of
the journals. She picked it up and saw it was a note from Wendy Martin, one of her
freshman students. "Professor Wilkerson," it read, "I just wanted to thank you for taking
the time to talk to me last week. I really needed to talk to someone experienced about it,
and all my other professors are men, and I just couldn’t have talked to them. You helped
me a whole lot."

Sighing, Wilkerson folded the note, put it in her bag, and closed her office door.
Suddenly the pile of journals and the $1,000 didn’t seem so important.

Case Questions

1. What do you think Melinda Wilkerson will do? Is she satisfied with the way she is
being treated?

2. Explain the behaviors of Wilkerson and Agua using the motivation theories in this
chapter.