AccountBack, an accounting software and services company had freshly elevated Wendy

Peterson, a veteran in client servicing, to Vice President of Sales at the Plano Texas office
of Accountback. She had a very strong and motivated personality and was a very
confident and educated woman. Peterson had developed a strategy to breach an
emerging Chinese market in the area, but felt she lacked the right personnel. In light of
this, as part of her strategy to penetrate the lucrative, yet largely untapped Chinese
market in Plano, she hired a business professional, Fred Wu as a sales executive at
AccountBack. Although he had no experience in sales, she still went on to hire him as he
had an entrepreneurial bent of mind and had considerable knowledge of the Chinese
market as well, which was exactly what she was looking for to fill the position. Wu was
born and raised in China, partly educated in the U.S., and immigrated to the U.S. in 2004.
Thus, Wu was well proficient in Chinese language, which made him best suited to deal
with these Chinese business leaders. Once he knew all the business, Wu started working
outside the office more. Wendy was a person who liked to be constantly updated by her
subordinate about his work while Wu was someone who preferred working
independently. There was increase in revenue from the Wu Account, which was
attributed to approval of expensive add-ons to his client without the prior approval
made by Peterson. Although this action was against the company policy, Wu tried to
justify his action by saying that he has legitimate proof that these requests were made
by client themselves. Moreover, Wu gave much attention to his existing client rather
than brining new client for the company, which was his primary job. Within eight
months of working with AccountBack, he has signed his regional team's largest client.
Peterson was pleased since it showed her strategy was working, but she had
reservations about his performance, the way he neglected to follow company policies
and appeared to not take Peterson’s concerns seriously. Wu has requested an assistant
which is unprecedented within AccountBack's flat organizational structure. As the
Account back company has a flat structure where an assistant was generally provided
only to senior sales executives who handled more than 30 accounts and some of these
assistants were working on sharing basis. Peterson perceives this request as
unreasonable. Later he stated he had been offered an opportunity with a competitor.
Peterson felt she needed to either grant Wu’s request, or fire him. Peterson knew her
decision would no doubt affect the office personnel as they may follow him, her growth
plan for the area, company losing a resourceful asset along with big clients, and possibly
even her career.

Problem statement
Whether to fire Wu or not.